


Transgressions

by agent_florida



Series: All Too Human [3]
Category: Red vs. Blue
Genre: Age Difference, Anal Sex, Canonical Character Death, Child Abuse, Childhood Sexual Abuse, Cycle of Abuse, Dubious Consent, Light Bondage, M/M, Memory Alteration, Oral Sex, Seven Deadly Sins Meme, Suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-06-11
Updated: 2011-07-21
Packaged: 2018-01-15 23:20:16
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 7
Words: 27,743
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1323010
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/agent_florida/pseuds/agent_florida
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The assignation process goes a little rougher than Wash expected, mostly because Epsilon is all of his weaknesses rolled into one.</p><p>ORPHANED @ 7/8</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Lust

Agent Washington knew he’d never been the luckiest man on the planet, but this was taking things too far.  
  
The new agents had arrived, all of them young and primed for war, and the Freelancers who had been rated highest in their testing are paired first. Command seemed to have some ulterior motive in pairing them, because Wash was paired last, stuck with the youngest of them. And Wash knew they had found out his weakness. Those eyes were supernaturally blue, staring at him stubbornly from under black fringe. He was skinny and his black uniform was clinging to him in all the right places, and Wash knew this kid couldn’t be older than sixteen but he  _wanted_  him, damn them all, he  _wanted_.  
  
He couldn’t say anything about it, and the pressure already building inside him was making him more tense than usual. He knew he needed to act casual, disinterested, to wait for the kid to leave him alone for five goddamn minutes while he could let his imagination run rampant, but idle chatter had never been his strong suit. “So what’s your name, kid?”  
  
“Epsilon.” His voice was hard-edged, like he’d seen things he was never meant to see. This kid was old beyond his years, and it only made Wash’s situation worse. “Yours?”  
  
“Agent Washington.” That was his name now, and this little shit was going to call him that.  
  
“That’s not a name,” Epsilon complained.  
  
“Neither is Epsilon.” God, his patience with his partner was wearing thin, and they’d only been paired for a few minutes.  
  
“Hey. All I know is what they told me. And they told me my name is Epsilon. So why don’t you just fucking tell me your name?”  
  
The smartass had a dirty mouth and an attitude to match, and Wash knew by now that this kid would be the death of him. “You call me Wash or you don’t call me anything at all.”  
  
“Fuck you. All I want to know is your name.” They’d reached Wash’s room by now, and Wash was surprised to see the duffels piled on the second bed; apparently they’d moved Epsilon’s things in without letting him know.  
  
Wash made sure to shut the door behind him before letting the kid know enough to shut him up. “David.”  
  
“Fine, then,  _David_ ,” Epsilon said, arms crossing in front of his chest, “you wanna tell me what exactly it is that I’m supposed to be doing with you?”  
  
Writhing underneath him, sweat pooling in his clavicles and beading on his forehead, crying out obscenely as Wash fucked him, and he shook his head to clear his mind of that completely unsolicited and pornographic mental image. “Don’t call me that – that’s an order.” It was bad enough that the kid looks so pervertible. That it was his given name coming out of that sweet young mouth – it just made everything worse. “Unpack your things, and start doing some research on tomorrow’s mission while I shower.” He felt like he was about to snap, and it was the one thing he can think of that would give him some privacy to take care of this unexpected problem.  
  
“Where’s the –“ he could hear Epsilon asking him, but he shut the door to the bathroom behind himself and stripped in record time, groaning as his cock was exposed. He’d been hard since the first curse out of his new partner’s mouth, embarrassed by his body’s reaction to the kid. He kept the water scalding, punishing himself for these completely unwanted feelings. It didn’t stop him from stroking his cock lazily, resting his forehead on the forearm that braced him against the cold tile of the shower wall. He could see it so clearly in his mind’s eye – that swotty mouth inching its way down and back up, bluest blue eyes glancing up at him as if for approval. He tried to stay quiet but couldn’t help the little gasps he let out. “Mmh!”  
  
He swore he could hear Epsilon’s voice in his ear, calling out “David!”, and it only motivated him harder, fisting his cock at a furious pace. “Aagh…  _fuck…_ ” It felt too good for it to last, and he realized that it really was Epsilon calling his name, banging on the door. It was the last thing he needed to finally let the lust uncoil, stifling a cry into a ‘mmph!’ There was a brief haze as he collected his thoughts again, and then he felt dirtier than ever before, watching his cum wash down the shower wall.  
  
The sharp edge was gone, but that deep current of desire was still there. At least Wash felt coherent enough to hold a conversation now, and he hoped it had been enough to keep his cock in line for the next few hours. When he stepped back into the room, he had a towel around his waist and another around his shoulders, dripping water onto the floor. Epsilon was unpacking his things into drawers, and the mechanical way his body moved made Wash wonder whether there wasn’t something wrong with this kid. “No personal effects?”  
  
Epsilon’s eyes flicked to him, a flash of supernatural blue, before his eyes narrowed and he turned back to his work. “Why would I have personal effects?”  
  
Wash didn’t have an answer for such an inane question, so he asked another instead. “How old are you, anyway?”  
  
“Sixteen.” So he had been right. “The fuck do you care?”  
  
“You’re a soldier,” Wash pointed out. “A trained killer. And you’re  _sixteen years old._  Care to give me an explanation?”  
  
“I don’t have one. I just do what they fucking tell me.” He shoved his uniform into the drawers with a little more violence than strictly necessary, and Wash enjoyed seeing him agitated.  
  
“Where did they find you?”  
  
“I don’t remember.” Turtlenecks were coming unfolded as Epsilon got angrier, and Wash could see his hands shaking.  
  
“How old were you?”  
  
“I  _don’t remember,_  asshole.” This time it was his trousers that were coming unpressed, Epsilon’s rage building with every moment.  
  
“Why didn’t they give you an explanation?” Wash lost interest in getting dressed in favor of studying this new partner of his, the way his ass was sticking out just so as he leaned over to put his things away, and he hated himself for noticing this detail.  
  
“Listen, David.” He stood straight, glaring at Wash. “I told you,  _I don’t fucking know._  And I sure as hell don’t owe you anything.”  
  
Hearing his given name out of his mouth was the last thing Wash needed right now, and it lit his fuse again. It took so little out of this kid to flip his switch from self-control to righteous anger, a sizzle of lust burning again beneath it all. “Let’s get one thing straight: I’m your handler here. You do what I tell you to do.” He took a step closer to the kid, hoping to inspire some fear in him, encroach on his personal space. “I’ve told you not to call me that, and you  _keep doing it._ ”  
  
“You unbelievable sonofabitch.” Epsilon’s arms cross again, a smirk tugging up at one corner of his mouth, and it was as if he actually  _enjoyed_  getting a rise out of Wash. “I just met you an hour ago. You think I’m going to take orders from you?”  
  
“You need to learn your place.” The insubordination was mind-boggling. Wash’s fingers itched to close around this kid’s throat and throttle him senseless – either that, or to caress soft skin, grasp at him and hear him sigh at the sensations.  
  
“Yeah? And where, exactly, would that be?” Epsilon’s voice was unbelievably silky, and there was still a glimmer of defiance in those beautiful blue eyes.  
  
Wash just stared at him. He was actually  _asking_  for it. And so he didn’t even bother to restrain his rage, closing the gap between them and fisting his hands in his turtleneck. “Up against the wall,” he muttered low into his ear, and the soft cry as he slammed Epsilon into the wall made the violence totally, totally worth it.  
  
Then those eyes glared at him again, a flash of blue before a fist came at his face. He could dodge it well enough, catching Epsilon’s fist in a strong hand. He was surprised at how strong the bones feel in his fist: this wasn’t a kid that would break easily. Epsilon was impatient, though, and didn’t even think to move when Wash punched him in the face, cartilage in his nose crunching under his knuckles and skull making a cracking noise as it connected with the wall. His nose wasn’t broken, but blood is blooming on his face.  
  
Epsilon  _laughed_  as he used his free hand to wipe the blood away from his mouth, that same self-satisfied look still on his face. But it wasn’t just this that made Wash realize that something about this kid was very, very wrong – it was the way Epsilon was leaning back against his shoulders so he could push his pelvis closer to Wash. The movement nudged his towel up his leg, and Wash could feel a  _bulge_  up against his thigh. The kid  _wanted_  him. Epsilon  _wanted_ , just as badly as Wash did. “What’re you gonna do,  _David_?” he asked through that incredible smirk.  
  
“You self-sacrificing idiot,” he murmured, using a thumb to smear the blood under Epsilon’s nose onto his cheek. He would more beautiful broken than whole, and with that thought, Wash finally lost the last of his will to resist. He crushed Epsilon back against the wall, fingers tangling in his hair and exposing an ear so he could whisper into it. “I’m going to fuck you.”  
  
“Oh, you basta –“ Epsilon tried to say, but Wash cut him off, licking the blood from his lips before slipping his tongue into his new partner’s mouth. It was too easy to pin that wrist on the wall above Epsilon’s head, and grasping at one slim thigh to pull their bodies even closer felt so unbelievably satisfying. Epsilon’s heel dug into his ass, and he knew his towel was slipping, but he couldn’t bring himself to care. He kissed him harder, harder, until teeth bit into his lips. Epsilon wasn’t the only one bleeding now, and the taste of blood was thick and metallic as their mouths collided over and over.  
  
It didn’t take long for Epsilon to lose his turtleneck. In the brief time that their lips parted, he had enough time to call Wash a ‘sick fuck’ before his wrists, still in the sleeves, were pinned back up against the wall. Wash enjoyed watching him struggle to free himself, and the little ‘fuck’s and ‘shit’s coming from his throat tasted even more delectable when Wash licked and sucked along the taut cords in Epsilon’s neck.  
  
Epsilon’s hands came free from the sleeves of his shirt, and his nails scraped against Wash’s shoulders, the small sparks of pain only spurring Wash to greater heights. His towels both fell to the floor, forgotten, as Epsilon’s other thigh came up around his hips. Wash grasped at his ass to hold him off the floor, kneading pert flesh in his large hands, and he groaned at the thought that soon he’d be buried to the hilt between those cheeks. Epsilon must have read his mind, because his hand wrapped gently around Wash’s cock, light touches just enough to tease him to unbearable hardness.  
  
It would be unfair to call what they were doing ‘kissing’ –it felt more like oral molestation, each of them trying to outdo the other in ferocity. Wash’s hands slipped inside Epsilon’s trousers, and the moan from Epsilon’s throat was delicious as Wash worked to divest him of his clothes. Somehow, with a little twisting and a few more ‘fuck’s from Epsilon, the kid ended up just as naked as Wash.  
  
He looked even skinnier naked than he had clothed, and Wash marveled as he traced the outline of his ribs, his collarbones, held his bony elbows as he licked the shell of his ear. Even through his violence, Epsilon was submitting to him, allowing his arms to be pinned up against the wall again, and his back arched as Wash ran his mouth down his neck, along the line of his shoulder. Their cocks nudged gently together with each buck of Epsilon’s hips against what Wash was doing to him, and Wash knew he couldn’t wait much longer.  
  
He didn’t want to stop running his mouth along Epsilon’s skin, but as much as he wanted to hurt Epsilon, he knew the kid was going to need prepped for what was about to happen to him. It took him a few seconds to slick two of his fingers with his own spit, and then Epsilon was gasping out “oh,  _asscunt_ ” as Wash sought out his hole and pushed inside. Any words Epsilon would have said seemed to die out as Wash nudged up against a little ridge inside him, and the way he threw back his head to show his adam’s apple was irresistible.  
  
A second finger, and Epsilon was panting harder, wrists twitching under Wash’s hold. The curses were coming less frequently now, and those blue, blue eyes were half-lidded from pleasure, but a purposeful jab up against his prostate from Wash’s fingertips and he was begging “oh,  _fuck me_ ” and rutting his cock up against Wash’s abs.  
  
“Is that really what you want?” Wash knew he had to ask, but it was more than that – the shiver running the length of Epsilon’s body was so luscious it ought to have been criminal.  
  
“Fuck, David, just –“ and he lost the words as Wash’s fingers kept fucking him, hitting that one spot over and over.  
  
But to maneuver this right, Epsilon was going to have to move; as good as it felt to have Epsilon’s heels digging into his ass, mechanics just didn’t work that way. Wash pulled his fingers out oh-so-slowly, earning a wordless cry from his partner, and he let go of his wrists to pull Epsilon’s thighs away from his hips. “Turn around,” he ordered, and his own voice was so foreign to him, so fogged by lust that he didn’t sound like himself.  
  
Epsilon purposefully slid against him as he turned his body, tendons in his legs standing out with tension as he forced himself onto the balls of his feet. It only took Wash the space of a few seconds to spit into his palm and slick his cock, the sensation so intense that he hissed. Epsilon was obediently keeping his hands above his head, and if Wash squinted he could almost imagine that his new partner was chained to the ceiling. Then came the moment of truth: spreading the kid’s ass and taking him like the bitch he was.  
  
God, it gave him such a thrill to know that he had such control over this body in front of him, that he could alter the precise pitch, stress, tone of the cries that were coming from that delectable throat. Epsilon screamed, his adam’s apple bobbing in his throat as Wash’s cock began to violate him. The pleasure of it was almost as great as the feel of Epsilon clenching around him, heat tightening around him like a vise, and Wash was sure he was the first person to touch Epsilon like this, to want him like this, because he wasn’t relaxing. It was too enjoyable to force himself in, to break Epsilon in under his hand.  
  
Epsilon’s hands were scrabbling against the wall, nails scraping, as if he could crawl up and escape what Wash was doing to him, but there was nowhere for him to go and they both knew it. Wash could see the glisten of one fat tear rolling down his cheek as he finally sunk in, balls-deep, grunting from the rawness of the pleasure. He wanted to thrust, to take, to completely violate Epsilon, but patience was the key. It only took a few words from Epsilon, though, to make him lose his composure again. “You gonna fuck me or you just gonna tease?” One rough thrust, and Epsilon’s chest slammed back into the wall. “ _Shit,_  yeah, like that –“  
  
Wash just wished he would shut up – his voice was more of a turn-on than he had anticipated. But no matter how hard he pushed, those obscene words wouldn’t stop coming out of his mouth. Fucking him harder made him breathless, which only made it hotter that such profanity was coming from such a young mouth. It wasn’t long before each curse was punctuated by a sweaty slap and a grunt from Wash.  
  
He had thought that taking his shower had taken the edge off of things. It hadn’t. This was going too fast, lust raging through him and deconstructing him, and he hurriedly reached around to grasp at Epsilon’s cock and fist it so hard it had to hurt. It finally made Epsilon stop cursing, but if possible, his now-wordless cries were even more erotic.  
  
Everything was building up too quickly, and Wash threaded his fingers in Epsilon’s soft hair, pulling it as his hand knotted into a fist, trying to stave off the inevitable. And then it didn’t matter, because he was coming, harder than he ever remembered, with a ‘ _fuck_ ’ that turned out to be unanimous with Epsilon as his partner blew his load over Wash’s fist. The haze of this one lasted longer, and Wash allowed his forehead to drop to Epsilon’s shoulder, at least one tender gesture for this whole encounter.  
  
When he finally had the sense to disengage, though, everything started resolving with perfect clarity. This was a sixteen-year-old kid, someone he had only known for the space of an hour, and Wash had just let his dirtiest secret come to the fore. He had let himself lose control in exchange for just a few moments of pleasure, and it hadn’t been a good bargain. But the way Epsilon was still trying to catch his breath, shoulders heaving, hands curled against the wall, looking thoroughly fucked… it was what he had deserved, wasn’t it?  
  
Epsilon pushed past him, glaring into his face. “I’ll – I’ll be right back.” Before Wash could ask him what his problem was, he had locked himself in the bathroom, and Wash could hear a distinct horfing sound before the water in the sink started running. For his part, he sat on the edge of his mattress, feeling thoroughly ashamed of himself, angry at Epsilon, and more than anything, completely unsatisfied.  
  
It was a few minutes before Epsilon left the bathroom, blood cleaned from his face but still looking worse for wear. “Hey, asshole, feel like sharing?” A smack on his shoulder, and then Epsilon was sitting next to him, body heat uncomfortably close.  
  
He had to say something. He had to apologize. “Listen, Epsilon…”  
  
“That’s not my fucking name.” Wash raised an eyebrow, about to ask a question, but Epsilon answered it for him. “It’s Eddie.”  
  
“Oh, so now you remember?” What an obnoxious little shit.  
  
“Must’ve fucked it outta me.” His eyes, even though they were fuck-dazed, were still brilliantly blue, and that smirk was back on his face.  
  
This was going to be an interesting day, Wash could already tell. “Tell me everything you remember.”  
  
“Better convince me first.” He let himself fall back onto the bed, head hitting the pillows, stretching out as if he owned it.  
  
Wash just stared at him, this kid he’d only known for a short while, and knew this was going to be the most difficult relationship he’d ever have to endure. “I hate you,” he told his new partner, knowing he didn’t mean the words. Actually acknowledging the sentiment would have been too hard.  
  
“I fuckin’ hate you too. Bastard.” Wash knew he didn’t mean it, and that was the most dangerous part of all.


	2. Wrath

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When Epsilon trashes their room, it makes Wash more than a little angry, and it's obvious that he needs to take his wrath out on his partner.

“Epsilon.”  
  
The kid was shivering on his bed, gangly arms holding his knees to his chest. Wash couldn’t see his face; the hollow beneath his bangs was hidden in darkness. “What.” His voice was flat, toneless, dead.  
  
“Is there… something you want to tell me?”  
  
“No.” He hugged his knees tighter, a reflexive clench.  
  
There had to be an explanation, though. Wash had been at the firing range for all of an hour, testing his DMR, and he had come back to find the room he shared with his Greek agent completely trashed. Drawers were pulled out of their armoires, turned over, their contents splashed across the floor; the lamp that had been on the bedside table was twisted and bent, the lightbulb smashed; the mattress on his own bed was flipped, the sheets balled on the floor, his pillow rent in two, stuffing everywhere; papers were in a flurry on the desk, some of them crumpled, all of them out of order; his personal effects were strewn everywhere. It looked like there had been a tornado in this room, only worse, because tornadoes didn’t have a why. “Epsilon,” he said, harsher.  
  
“What do you want from me?” His voice was small. He sounded like he was trying hard not to cry.  
  
“Unless you tell me why you’re acting like a petulant child,” he said through gritted teeth, “I’m going to have to find some way to punish you for this ridiculous insubordination.”  
  
“I’m not a  _child_ ,” Epsilon muttered behind his arms. His hands balled into fists. “I’m not. I – I’m an adult, they made me into a fucking adult… made me… made me…” He trailed off. When Wash finally got a glimpse of his eyes, they were blank with the vacant stare of the possessed, looking at something through the wall and a thousand yards away.  
  
“Whatever they ‘made’ you do, I don’t think this was part of it.” A muscle in Wash’s jaw twitched; he hated his own face for betraying his emotions. “Trashing our room, there’s no reason for it –”  
  
“It wasn’t me.” Epsilon’s eyes found Wash’s – and looked straight through him. “I didn’t do it.”  
  
“There’s no one else that could have been in here!” He knew he was getting impatient, knew but couldn’t help it. Epsilon always managed to find his fuse and light it, and he was a spark away from exploding.  
  
“It wasn’t – I didn’t, it was – it was Omega, he –”  
  
That was all it took. Wash’s hand fisted in the neck of Epsilon’s turtleneck, and before he had time to process what was happening, he tore his partner away from his bed. He could finally see the full expression on his face, morphing from defiance through confusion and then straight to fear. “Stop lying to me, Epsilon, or I swear to you…” The sentence wouldn’t end itself, but the way Epsilon was staring at him made him realize that threats were totally useless here.  
  
“You swear what, Wash? What are you gonna do, kill me? Shit.” The sick, desperate laughter Wash knew so well bubbled up in Epsilon’s throat again, and his smile was fanged and dangerous.  
  
“Why did you do it?” Wash screamed in his face.  
  
“The fuck would I tell you?” Epsilon yelled right back.  
  
Wash used the hand at Epsilon’s neck to pin the boy to the wall behind his bed. He longed to pound some sense into him, but he had to give Epsilon a chance to tell the truth. One last question: “What were you looking for?”  
  
Epsilon spat in his face.  
  
The rein that Wash had been keeping on his rage snapped, and he had a nauseating sense of déjà vu when his other fist came up to punch Epsilon in the nose, but the feeling was twisted again when Epsilon dodged his blow and Wash’s knuckles slammed into the wall. There was already a crack forming there, drywall dust on his fingers, and the little bit crumbled when he pulled his hand away.  
  
One of Epsilon’s hands came up, and his nails slashed across Wash’s face; his eyes closed reflexively, and Epsilon used his disorientation to push him over. He landed with a heavy thud on the floor, winded, and in no time Epsilon straddled his waist, landing weak punches on his head and shoulders. “I don’t have to fucking explain myself to you!” he screamed between blows.  
  
Something wet landed on Wash’s face – and for once, it wasn’t blood. When he looked up, Epsilon’s eyes were squeezed shut, and tears were dripping off his chin. “Eddie,” he said gently, grabbing at his wrist to stop some of this overwhelming emotional outburst. Epsilon’s free hand still batted at him ineffectively, but the force is slowly draining out of the impacts. “Why are you crying?”  
  
“You can’t make me,” he yelled, voice ragged from the sobbing he was trying so hard to hold back. “You can’t make me, you can’t make me…” He didn’t fight when Wash grabbed his other hand, forced him to be still. “You can’t make me,” each repetition closer to a weak whimper, “you can’t make me, you can’t –”  
  
“Epsilon,” he pleaded with him over the sound of his litany, “calm down, just calm down.” It started to dawn on Wash that the boy was clutching his hands like a castaway might clutch a life raft, white-knuckled and desperate. This was the closest they’d come to actual intimacy since they first met.  
  
The kid was weeping, shaking. “I remember,” he whispered. His face was twisted with all the feelings he couldn’t tamp down. “It’s your fault, Wash. If we hadn’t –”  
  
“Oh, no, you’re not pulling that on me.” He rolled Epsilon onto his back, the kid’s ankles crossing behind his back, and his arms pinned Epsilon’s wrists to the floor. “You asked for it.”  
  
“Fuck you,” Epsilon cursed back.  
  
“No,  _fuck me_  is what you said,” Wash corrected him, voice a low, sadistic growl. “And that’s what I did.”  
  
“And then I remembered,” Epsilon said in that tight voice that meant he was trying not to tear up, “I fucking remembered  _everything_ , I don’t want to remember, God fuck, the shit they did to us…”  
  
“A trigger,” Wash realized.  
  
“Or a switch,” Epsilon said. His eyes were wide with fear and glossy with tears and oh so very blue.  
  
He couldn’t possibly be suggesting what Wash thought he was suggesting. “And you think I can turn it off.”  
  
“Please.” The word sounded like Epsilon let it slip without meaning to – he was too proud for it to have been intentional. “I don’t want to remember.”  
  
“You’ll forget for a little while.” Wash could at least guarantee him that much. For as long as they fought, for as long as they fucked, maybe even for a time after that – but they kept colliding like this, and Wash’s self-control was already on the fritz.  
  
Epsilon’s eyes stared into him, cold as the flames of hell. “Promise me.” It came out as a whisper, but there was an unimaginable weight behind it.  
  
Wash nodded, hating himself for the deliberate manipulation behind the action. He couldn’t say it, couldn’t use those words, because they were going to come back to haunt him later, and his promises never ended well.  
  
The change in Epsilon’s body language beneath him was almost imperceptible, but he closed his eyes, an admission of trust. He was submitting, consciously  _submitting_ , and Wash marveled at it, the slightly bared throat, the flutter of his eyelashes, the curl of his fingers into half-fists, the subtle lift and grind of his hips against Wash’s and the definite arousal that was already there. “Be gentle?” he pleaded, the harsh edge taken out of his voice.  
  
Wash brushed a stray lock of hair out of Epsilon’s eyes, feeling a rush of adrenaline once he realized that Epsilon’s hand was still right where he pinned it. “When have I ever given you more than you can handle?” Wash asked him, voice laced with sinful seduction. It still wasn’t a promise – if he asked for more, harder, faster, rougher, Wash planned to give it, consequences be damned.  
  
He didn’t let Epsilon answer his rhetorical question. When their lips met, the kiss was hard enough to bruise, but slow and chaste. When Wash pulled back, he was almost relieved to find Epsilon’s trademark smart-assed expression back on his face. “You could at least try,” was his retort.  
  
“Oh, you are a snotty little cuss, aren’t you.” It wasn’t even a question at this point – especially when words so quickly became superfluous, nothing more than full-throated moans as their mouths moved together again, teeth and tongues colliding. Epsilon rolled his hips up from beneath him, the bulge in his crotch grinding up suggestively against Wash’s own arousal, but Wash pulled back and tightened his grip around the kid’s wrists. “Behave.”  
  
“Or what?” Epsilon goaded him, a cocky grin spreading across his face.  
  
Wash’s hand moved before he meant it to. He knew where it was going, but it was still a shock to his system to see his tight grip around his partner’s throat, to feel his pulse under his hand, to hear that delicious choking sound as the crux of his thumb and finger bore down even harder on his trachea. Now it was Epsilon’s hand around his own wrist, trying  _anything_  to get the pressure to stop, and as his face turned red he grew more and more desperate, scratching at him, pulling at the hand Wash still had pinned to the floor. He was practically writhing under him, not even realizing how sexually charged his movements were.  
  
After a maddeningly slow count of fifteen, Wash let off, but his palm could still feel the bob of Epsilon’s larynx as he huffed and gasped for breath. “Shit – what the fuck –  _why_  the fuck –”  
  
“I don’t think you understand,” Wash growled in his ear. “I’m in control of whether you live or die. You got that?”  
  
Epsilon’s eyes were wide and panicked, his breathing still erratic, but he looked straight at Wash when he spoke. “Do it again.”  
  
Wash blinked. Then he blinked again. “What?”  
  
Epsilon yanked at Wash’s wrist to bring a little pressure down onto his throat again. “I said  _do it again_.”  
  
Wash was stunned for a moment. When he finally realized what was happening, he very deliberately took his hand away and pinned Epsilon’s wrist back down to the floor. “No. I won’t. You know why?” He continued to speak over Epsilon’s barrage of curses. “Because it’s what you want.” Also because he was afraid he’d kill Epsilon if given half the chance.  
  
“Damn it, David –”  
  
Even if he’d wanted to restrain himself, his self-control was already gone by now. He descended on Epsilon with a mauling kiss, only letting go of the kid’s wrists so he could find the hem of his turtleneck and pull it over his head. Epsilon tried to fight it, of course, but he stopped abruptly when Wash tweaked a nipple with sharp fingernails, throat moving in a hoarse scream. Fuck being ‘gentle’. If Epsilon was going to push his buttons like this, he had to know the consequences.  
  
“Fuck,” Epsilon muttered, and “shit” as his shirt was peeled completely away, and then another “fuck” when Wash’s mouth landed on his already-abused throat, sucking and biting. He wanted – needed – to leave a mark, leave something for the kid to remember whose he was, and it was almost pleasurable when Epsilon’s nails raked along his scalp, holding his head in place.  
  
Almost. Wash pulled Epsilon’s arms back down, fists curling around his slim elbows. “Do I need to restrain you?” He didn’t wait for an answer. Reaching for one of the D-ring belts strewn on the floor meant letting go of one of Epsilon’s arms, but before he could claw free of Wash’s embrace, he was able to bind his wrists together and force them above his head, tying him to a bedpost.  
  
Epsilon was predictable, really: the way he was yanking at his hands was threatening to dislocate his shoulders. “What the fuck is  _wrong_  with you?”  
  
Wash was pleased to hear his outburst trail off into a helpless, whimpering moan as he licked the sweat from the indent of his collarbone. “You’re going to hurt yourself if you keep struggling like that,” he murmured against that pale, fragile skin. Not that he was exactly warning against it, just alerting him to a simple fact.  
  
“But I don’t fucking  _want_  –” Oh, but he did. He was holding up his hips like an open invitation, and Wash took it, pulling all his clothes off and throwing them aside; it didn’t matter where they landed, since the room was trashed anyhow.  
  
And now he had this beautiful expanse of nakedness under him, flushed and aroused and stuttering, and hell if he wouldn’t take advantage of it. “Just look at you,” he breathed, mouth dangerously close to Epsilon’s cock by now. It was too easy to make him squeal like that, lapping at the jutting bone of his hip and grasping at his ass. “So noisy,” he commented over a particularly loud moan, one caused by gripping the backs of his thighs and pushing his knees back to his chest. “I’d gag you, but I like it when you scream.”  
  
And scream he did. Epsilon was lucky that he’d dirtied the room this much – otherwise, Wash wouldn’t have been able to slick his fingertips with lotion before he worked one in. It was fascinating to watch Epsilon come undone just from the simple sensation, and so he added another, shoving them further until he could crook them forwards just so. “Fuck – oh, God,  _Wash_  – shit, holy, holy shit…” he was babbling, no longer fighting his bondage but instead curling his fingers around the bedpost for something to hold onto while Wash’s fingers worked him open.  
  
He certainly  _looked_  ready enough, face red with a wanton flush that spread down onto his shoulders, black hair already damp with sweat, cock so straining hard it was dripping pre on his stomach, toes curled in. Wash brought himself out lazily, enjoying the way Epsilon’s eyes were searching his face for an expression, a reaction, anything. He wouldn’t give him even that much. “Say it,” he demanded.  
  
“Just do it already,  _fuck_ ,” Epsilon choked out, his breathing erratic as Wash’s fingers continued to move in him.  
  
“Do what?” His trousers and briefs had fallen down to his thighs; feeling Epsilon’s bare thighs around his bare hips had never been so enticing.  
  
For a few tension-filled seconds, Wash watched Epsilon try to hold out on him. His eyes flashed brilliant blue as they sought Wash’s, and he bit his lip, trying to keep back the words Wash wanted from him. But it wasn’t until Wash took away his fingers that he screamed out “Fuck me!”  
  
The word was barely out of Epsilon’s mouth when Wash thrust into him, smooth and slow, until he was balls-deep. “God, you are  _sinfully_  tight,” he hissed, pushing Epsilon’s knees even closer to his shoulders.  
  
Epsilon squirmed under him, eager for friction that Wash wasn’t about to provide. “Move – fuck,” he panted out. Another tantalizing thrust and his eyes fluttered closed, adam’s apple bobbing indecently as he moaned. “Harder – harder…”  
  
The kid couldn’t possibly have comprehended what he was asking for, but Wash gave in anyhow. It was so satisfying to take out his anger on his partner, to show him just how infuriated he’d been to see that Epsilon had been out of control, to pound him senseless until he couldn’t even remember where the rage had come from. His hands were slippery on Epsilon’s thighs from more than just sweat; he’d dug his nails in too hard, drawing blood from more than one scratch. Epsilon’s cries, though, weren’t pained – he genuinely seemed to be enjoying this. “You like this, don’t you,” Wash muttered into his ear through clenched teeth. “You like making me angry, because you know I’ll take it out on you like this.”  
  
“How else could I get you to fuck me?” Epsilon whispered, increasingly breathless as Wash rammed into him faster and faster.  
  
“You could just ask,” Wash grunted out – and then had a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach as he realized what he’d just said. How could he just admit a weakness of character like that in front of this brat? To cover for it, he reached down a hand to wrap around Epsilon’s cock and gently stroke.  
  
“Then I won’t make bullshit excuses any more.” Epsilon’s eyes were half-lidded, his smile wicked; he looked entirely too debauched. “Oh, holy shit, Wash –  _Wash!_ ”  
  
Wash caught his mouth in a kiss as he kept ramming him, tasting each delicious curse as it tumbled out of his mouth, feeling each twitch in Epsilon’s cock when he hit up against that spot inside him. Epsilon bit his lip – not hard enough to draw blood, but just hard enough to hurt, and it just sent Wash higher, higher, until – “Have you learned your lesson?”  
  
“Yes – fuck, yes – oh, God,  _yes_ ,” Epsilon hissed, coming hard over Wash’s hand and onto his own stomach. A few more erratic thrusts and then Wash followed him, biting down on the soft skin where Epsilon’s shoulder met his neck to muffle his loud groan.  
  
They stayed still for a precious few seconds, filthy with sweat and cum and blood and tears, nothing in Wash’s ears but his own attempts to catch his breath. And then, just as before, everything resolved itself with perfect clarity, and he remembered exactly who it was whose body was beneath him. It only took a moment to disengage, pulling out and peeling away, letting Epsilon’s feet back down to meet the floor.  
  
Epsilon was still lying there, panting and shaking. He looked so small – breakable, even. He was too out of it for coherent sentences, but his glare for Wash was so pointed that it ought to have been weaponized. “Wrong,” was all he could find the energy to say.  
  
Wash wasn’t sure what he was referring to, but the word stung all the same. He knew he was wrong for taking his wrath out on his partner – for wanting a sixteen-year-old like he did – but he couldn’t be faulted. Epsilon was just as much to blame, was just as wrong as he was. He ignored the barb, though, and asked the question that had been lingering in the air: “Did you forget?”  
  
“Whaddaya think, dipshit?” He yanked, hard, at his wrists still bound to the bedframe. “Get me outta this.” Wash was only too happy to comply; he wanted the kid out of his sight. Epsilon rubbed his wrists as he was released, fingers tracing over raised red welts, but his face contorted into a bigger wince when he tried to sit up straight. “What the fuck? I wanted to be able to  _walk_  sometime today.”  
  
“You’ll do more than that,” Wash ordered him, pulling his trousers back up around his waist as he stood. “I expect this room to be clean by the time I get back.”  
  
“Back from where?” Epsilon spit out.  
  
It didn’t much matter – it just had to be anywhere but here. “Get to work,” Wash growled as he picked up his DMR and headed back out to the range. God, this encounter had been even more surreal than the last one. How many times would Wash give in before this was over?


	3. Envy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There's so much to be jealous of - and Epsilon's the trigger for all of it.

It was the little things that added up, really.  
  
They’d check the BattleNet leader board on Sundays and find that they were floating somewhere in the middle, edging closer to the bottom with every passing week. Epsilon would lose focus during one of their training exercises and Wash would have to smack him around a little to get him to pay attention again. They’d go on missions as a two-man team, but to Wash it would always feel like he was doing the work on his own – Epsilon’s aim was abysmal at best.  
  
All of it reinforced to Wash that not only did he get the youngest Greek agent, but that he also got one without an innate battle ability of his own. York had Delta’s logic, Maine had Sigma’s creativity, Tex had Omega’s rage, Wyoming had Gamma’s deceit – and Wash had a boy that was falling apart at the seams, unraveling more and more every day, behaving more and more erratically as time wore on. He’d never been exceptionally lucky to begin with, but this was just getting ridiculous. Most days, he didn’t even make the effort to hide his envious stares.  
  
Wash could put up with Epsilon’s attitude – more to the point, he  _had_  to – but he had limits. There were definite standards for what was okay and what was completely unacceptable behavior, and Epsilon seemed intent on blurring that line whenever possible.  
  
Today, they were preparing for a mission against Outpost D-20 Snowbound. Epsilon was supposed to be in charge of annotating the map Wash had pulled up on his slate while Wash was frantically data-mining using the ancient standard-issue Freelancer desktop computer. But even though they’d divided the work, things were still so slow-going that Wash was quickly losing his patience. “Let me see what you have,” he snapped at his partner.  
  
“But I’m not –” he started to protest.  
  
Wash cut him off before he could make an excuse. “Now,” he ordered him, holding out a hand.  
  
Epsilon passed the slate to him, glaring at him like his gaze could kill. Wash was good at ignoring those by now; he focused on the graphics. Standard entry and exit options were marked, something so obvious that Wash didn’t understand why Epsilon had annotated them. The only other thing marked was the locations of the bases, which was just an insult to his intelligence: they were pretty noticeable, gigantic monoliths in an otherwise desolate landscape. No reckoning of troop numbers and no individual profiles of the COs, even though Wash was certain he’d not only read them aloud but also direct-downloaded them to the slate. On top of that, the marks for weapon and vehicle placement were suspiciously absent. When Wash looked up, Epsilon was scowling at the corner of the room, arms crossed. “Happy?” he asked sarcastically.  
  
Wash just rolled his eyes. “You are just – you’re useless. You are completely, one hundred percent useless.”  
  
“Oh, fuck you, Dad,” Epsilon snarled back. “Just because I’m not Lenny doesn’t mean I’m worthless.”  
  
“Where in the hell did that come from?” Even Epsilon didn’t seem to know: he clapped both hands over his mouth, fear-wide eyes staring at Wash over white knuckles. “That wasn’t a rhetorical question,” Wash clarified. “ _Tell me._ ”  
  
“But I  _can’t_ ,” Epsilon wailed, voice muffled by his palms.  
  
“You can and you will,” Wash commanded him.  
  
“But they’ll kill me, Wash!”  
  
“No one’s going to kill you!” Not exactly true: Epsilon’s complaining was getting so annoying that Wash thought he might just kill him himself.  
  
“I wasn’t even supposed to remember in the first place.” His tone was accusatory, but at least he brought his hands away from his face. “It was supposed to stay a secret. They wiped all of us to hide the evidence. I forgot my entire fucking family. All I had as proof that I belonged to anyone was this picture.” He flung it in Wash’s face.  
  
The photograph showed two figures: a man in his mid-twenties wearing a suit of light blue ceramic armor plating, and a child no older than five. The man’s helmet was removed, and his oversaturated blue eyes were staring straight at the camera; his close-cropped hair was a glossy raven’s feather black. From his somber demeanor alone, Wash could tell that this man was career military. Wash was more interested in the child in the picture, though. He had the same eyes and hair as the soldier, but his countenance was so different: he was clinging to the soldier’s thigh plating, head tilted up, gaze searching for some hint of acceptance. Wash thought it was almost cruel, the way the kid was being totally ignored. “Is this you?” he asked his partner.  
  
Epsilon didn’t seem to have heard him. “That’s my brother Leonard,” he said, pointing out the soldier with a fingertip. “He was this big supersoldier. Dad  _adored_  him.” The bitterness in his voice was almost palpable. “They were always working together, the two off them. It was almost like Lenny was his fucking shadow or something.”  
  
“And what about you?”  
  
“Shut up, I’m getting there.” He paused for a moment, drawing his knees up to his chest. “I guess if Lenny was Dad’s shadow, I was Lenny’s. I wanted to do everything he could. I wanted to  _be_  him. ‘Cause maybe, if I could do all that shit, then Dad would be proud of me, too.” He blew his bangs out of his eyes. “Of course, I was what, fuckin’ five, six years old. I didn’t understand  _why_  Dad played favorites so much, but as long as he did, then I wanted to play along.”  
  
“So that kid in the picture,” Wash asked him again. “That’s you?”  
  
“Yeah,” Epsilon admitted. “That was the last time I saw him.”  
  
Wash dropped the photo as if he’d been burned by it. “What happened?”  
  
Epsilon shrugged. “Shipped out. Dad told me he died. Eventually, he convinced me that I’d never had a brother at all. Dad couldn’t let it go, though. He wanted to teach Lenny’s skills to other people, and so he spent  _years_  putting together a place where he could do it. He called it some fancy name, Training Simulation fucking bullshit, and he asked me if I wanted to go. Well, shit, was I gonna turn down an opportunity to be more like my brother?”  
  
“The Academy,” Wash muttered to himself.  
  
“Six and a half years I was there,” Epsilon continued. “Six and a half fucking years of needles and tests and guns and blood – plastic surgery, training films, isolation rooms…” Epsilon huffed out a tight breath, a sound halfway hysterical. “There were dozens of us in the beginning. The weak ones didn’t last. They told us they’d flunked out and that they were going back home, but we knew why they were leaving in boxes.” He let out another half-laugh half-sob. “What did they fucking  _think_  was going to happen? O’Malley was a fucking serial killer. You resisted too much…” He made a cutting motion with his thumb across his throat.  
  
“Wait – what the hell –”  
  
“And so they wiped the rest of us a few years ago,” Epsilon steamrollered over him. “They built us again from the ground up, but sometimes, shit would get through. Like during our training exercises, they’d bring in a victim for us, and they’d look  _so fucking familiar_  but we could never figure out why.” A tear ghosted down the side of his face, but he didn’t seem to notice. “And then – it must have been on purpose, the way they paired us, because they left a fucking trigger!”  
  
“Literally,” Wash realized.  
  
“And you know what the cherry on top of the shit sundae is?” He let out a short, mirthless laugh. “The official word is that there was no prototype. There was no Alpha.”  
  
“Well… yeah,” Wash fumbled. “That’s what the Director told us.”  
  
“That  _fuckface_ ,” Epsilon spat out venomously, “spent  _years_  grooming Lenny into a perfect model for his little pet project – and then it’s just out of sight, out of fuckin’ mind! Saying he never existed doesn’t mean it’s true, and I have the goddamn proof right there!”  
  
“That’s what you were looking for when you took the room apart – you were looking for this.” He picked up the picture again, holding it up so he could compare the child in the photo with the teen in front of him. Epsilon still had some of that naïve childishness to him, and not just in the immature sense.  
  
Epsilon nodded sharply, then jerked his head to the side to sweep his bangs out of his eyes. “That picture,” he said, enunciating every word with a barb of absolute hatred, “is the only proof I have that the Alpha is real. That I’m not crazy.”  
  
Wash’s reaction was reflexive. “I don’t believe you.”  
  
“You don’t understand the shit that’s happened to me,” Epsilon accused him. “And I never even got around to telling you what happened with my dad.”  
  
“You told me enough – you told me he ruined your brother and forced you into the Academy.”  
  
“Yeah. Because he’s the Director.”  
  
Deep within Wash’s mind, something clicked, and once it processed, he felt the bottom of his stomach drop out in a sickening lurch. “No,” he muttered, trying to deny it. “No, that – that can’t be true, Epsilon, that’s impossible…”  
  
“Look at the evidence. You know I’m right.” Epsilon rested his chin on his knees, staring at him unabashedly.  
  
“No,” Wash repeated. He kicked his chair out from their desk and stood, trying to get some distance from Epsilon, but the room was too small – there was nowhere to go. He couldn’t face his partner, couldn’t face this knowledge, and so he stared at the wall as he thought things through. “There’s just no way. Even given the fact that your father set up the Academy, how does that mean that he’s the Director?”  
  
“Because our fucking project was just a sideshow for this one,” Epsilon said, like it was so obvious. “He’d do anything to copy what he did with Lenny. He tried it with us first – then he wiped us and started this goddamn project, except I’m pretty sure that this time, he didn’t do all the torture shit. And then he probably got desperate enough to fucking  _combine_  the two – shit, I don’t know, Wash, do you think I have answers?”  
  
Wash wheeled around on him. “You said you had proof!” he reminded him.  
  
“All I have is my memory, and even that is shit. I’ve gone through everything –  _everything_  – over and over again, and this is the only explanation that makes any fucking sense at all.”  
  
Wash knew that open, trusting look on his face – it was too genuine for Epsilon to have been lying. But he had to know. “You said your name was Eddie the first time we –”  
  
“I was born Edward Anthony Church.” His voice was small, but still confident.  
  
Everything shifted into place. It was undeniable now. “Director Church,” he breathed. “Dr. Leonard L. Church – and your brother Lenny…”  
  
“Do you get it now?” Epsilon asked him, quiet but anguished. “Can you even fucking comprehend how much I  _don’t want to know_  this shit?”  
  
“If you want to forget…” Wash let the sentence hover unfinished, watching Epsilon’s reaction carefully.  
  
Apparently, saying that was as good as giving permission: he practically sprung from where he was on his bed, flinging himself into Wash’s arms. His kiss was sweet but desperate, and when he pulled back, his blue eyes were glassy with the tears he was too proud to cry. “Tell me I’m good enough,” he insisted.  
  
Wash brought up a hand to caress the side of his face; Epsilon’s eyelashes fluttered as he leaned his head into the simple touch. “You’ll be okay,” he told his partner. It was the most he could fudge the truth.  
  
“When?” Epsilon demanded to know.  
  
Wash didn’t have an answer, even though it seemed like Epsilon was made of questions. So he kissed him again, softly, with as much tenderness as he had in him. “Look at how much you’ve come through,” he murmured, running his hand through Epsilon’s fine hair. “And you’re still alive. Give yourself a little credit.”  
  
Epsilon touched his lips to Wash’s again, feather-light and chaste; his fingers found Wash’s free hand, closed around his wrist, and tugged him forward, back in the direction of his bed. “Shit, I don’t even know who I am half the time,” he whispered against Wash’s mouth.  
  
Wash’s leg bumped against the frame of Epsilon’s bed, and his thigh came up between his partner’s legs. Epsilon gasped at the feeling, and then sighed as Wash sucked an earlobe into his mouth. “You’re Epsilon,” he purred into his ear.  
  
“Mm, yeah, say my name,” Epsilon moaned, arms coming up to circle Wash’s shoulders.  
  
“Epsilon…” When his partner’s knees gave out as Wash licked his neck, Wash used that moment of weakness to lay him down on the bed and crawl in alongside him.  
  
He let Epsilon’s hands wander where they would, reveling in the ghostly sensation as they snuck under the bottom hem of his turtleneck. Epsilon’s tongue tasted so good in his mouth, and he nipped at it playfully as he nudged Epsilon’s shirt up.  
  
Their mouths had to come apart while they stripped each other, but the almost-magnetic attraction between them was undeniable. Epsilon sucked on his bottom lip, fingers splayed out in the grooves of Wash’s abs; he was being meek, hesitant, and more than that, he was being respectful. It was all Wash could do to restrain his primal urge to just  _take_  what was being so willingly offered to him. He’d promised Epsilon at least some modicum of blissful ignorance, and so he intended for this to last as long as possible, a slow burn escalating until it was almost unbearable, hot as the flames of Hell.  
  
Epsilon didn’t fight it when Wash slipped a hand inside his trousers, fingers reaching for and then wrapping around his cock. A slow, sure stroke and he instinctively wrapped his legs around Wash’s. “D – Da – Dav –” he stuttered, losing the full name every time he tried to say it.  
  
“Shh,” Wash urged him, rolling him onto his back so he could be situated between his legs. If Epsilon managed to say his name, it would be game over for his self-control, and so he knew he had to divert Epsilon’s attention somehow. “Tell me what you want,” he said, voice heady with lust, before leaning down to put his mouth on one of Epsilon’s nipples.  
  
The high, wordless cry from Epsilon’s throat was a reward in itself. One of Epsilon’s hands came up to pet at the side of his head, fingers slipping to clutch onto his ear when Wash oh-so-gently worried it with his teeth. “Holy shit,” he gasped, hips bucking up to meet Wash’s fist.  
  
One last swirl of his tongue and Wash pulled away, hiding his grimace when Epsilon tweaked his ear in his impatience. The kid looked absolutely wanton beneath him, altogether too easy to seduce and persuade. “Tell me what you want,” he repeated.  
  
Epsilon was practically writhing with desperation beneath him. “Fuck – your  _mouth_ …”  
  
Wash took his hand back for only as long as it took for him to shuck off the rest of his clothes; Epsilon grasped feebly for him until he was back on top of him. “Mm, but where?” he pretended to deliberate, tracing a line over Epsilon’s ribs with a calloused fingertip.  
  
“Anywhere – oh, shit, yeah, like that,” he babbled as Wash grazed his teeth lightly against a jutting clavicle. He lifted his hips eagerly as Wash stripped him of the rest of his clothes, hands grasping at Wash’s shoulders so hard Wash was convinced he’d bruise. “More, fuck – aah…”  
  
Wash denied him. Epsilon let out a short whimper of protest when Wash pulled away, but it was for Epsilon’s own good that he was searching his bedside drawer. Finally he found the bottle of gun oil he’d been looking for; he could smell the sharp tang of it when he smeared his fingers with it. With his other hand, he grasped at Epsilon’s thigh and pushed his leg into the air. “Spread.”  
  
Epsilon was only too happy to oblige, legs splayed obscenely, a flush spreading across his face that was probably due as much to embarrassment as arousal. Wash descended on him again, mouth at his throat, and his fingertips ran in tantalizing circles around his entrance. “Fuck, just –” and Wash did, biting down on Epsilon’s neck as he slowly eased a finger inside. Epsilon moaned loudly at the intrusion, but he was taking it well enough: the scream he let out when Wash’s fingertip brushed up against his prostate was full of delectable vice. “Fucking –  _fuck!_ ” he cried out as Wash gradually began to thrust into him with his finger.  
  
“You’re a goddamn mess right now,” Wash murmured against the hickey he’d made on Epsilon’s neck. He slid in a second finger along with the first, leisurely fucking Epsilon with his hand, and when he sighed and gasped from the pleasure, Wash kissed him again and again, harder and harder, making sure to take his breath away.  
  
Epsilon let out an “oh holy shit  _Wash!_ ” at a very deliberate crook of his fingertips. When he looked down, he could see Epsilon’s free hand straying to his cock, lightly teasing himself in time with each movement of Wash’s fingers inside him. For someone so intent on forgetting, he had a preternatural way of burning moments like this into Wash’s memory – he didn’t think he’d ever be able to forget this sight.  
  
But as edible as he looked right now, Wash had every intention of pulling him apart even further. Wash flung his leg over his shoulder, getting a hand free so he could grab at Epsilon’s wrist and drag his hand do his own cock instead. When Epsilon’s fist closed gently around him, he hissed in relief, and when he very deliberately gave a subdued squeeze, Wash thought he’d had an aneurysm. He had to have more, and he had to have it right now. “Are you ready?” He’d better be.  
  
Epsilon nodded frantically, mewling when Wash took his hands away. Together they guided him inside, and their appreciative groans were simultaneous as Wash situated himself. He forced himself to be kind, made himself wait to move until he was sure Epsilon could take it, all the while praying for his discipline to hold out – the kid was tight and hot and  _perfect_ , ready for the taking. When Epsilon crossed his ankles and dug his heels into Wash’s ass, the intensity was kicked up another notch. “Fuck, Wash,” he gasped out, pulling him in deeper than he’d thought possible. “Move, just –  _fuck_ …”  
  
He obeyed, a smooth, expertly-angled thrust making Epsilon’s eyes flutter open unseeing. Another, and his eyes were rolling back in his head. Wash could feel the tiny scratches from Epsilon’s nails as his hands scrabbled for purchase on his back, but the sensation didn’t register as pain, only an extra dimension of pleasure that amplified everything else. “Epsilon,” he realized he was saying under his breath, leaving kisses on his face with every upstroke.  
  
“Oh, fuck – oh, shit – oh,  _wow_ ,” he sighed as Wash continued to move in him, a slow tidal roll that was threatening to drive both of them insane. “God, Wash –  _nngh!_ ”  
  
It was so difficult to restrain himself from pounding the kid senseless, but he was realizing that he could make him into a shivering wreck just by drawing it out. And, most surprising of all, Epsilon was letting him do it. “So obedient,” he murmured. Epsilon’s hair was already soaked with sex-sweat when he ran a hand through it; the raw musk of it was overpoweringly sensual, and he darted his tongue out to catch the rivulet coursing down the side of his face.  
  
Epsilon was beyond words now, chest heaving as he gasped for breath, moans the only noises coming out of his throat. Close, then – and Wash intended to keep him there as long as he could. When he slowed his movements even further, Epsilon made a high, wordless pleading noise. “No… fuck, Wash, ‘m so close…”  
  
“Shh,” he whispered, licking along the cords of his neck. Epsilon actively fought it when he stilled himself completely, which only made Wash chuckle. “Patience.”  
  
Epsilon tried to move, but Wash had him pinned too well. “I want –”  
  
“I know what you want.” Once he started moving, Epsilon’s litany of moans started up again, and he had to talk over them to get his point across. “And I also know that what you  _want_  and what you  _need_  can be completely opposite things. You  _need_  this, Epsilon.”  
  
“But…” He lost his words to more indecent cries as Wash plunged into him faster. “I don’t…” he tried again.  
  
Wash wouldn’t have it; he escalated his efforts, making Epsilon breathless. “Do you trust me?”  
  
“Yes,” Epsilon hissed. When he looked up into Wash’s face, his eyes were hidden by his bangs and half-lidded from bliss, yet they were still so unbelievably blue that Wash found himself completely immersed.  
  
He found a rhythm that suited them both, neither too slow nor too fast. “Let me do this for you,” he insisted, trying to keep his voice even despite how worked up he was becoming.  
  
Epsilon could do nothing but cling to him now; Wash could feel the tremors wracking his body, and he smiled to know that he was the one to make Epsilon like this. “More,” was the only word he seemed to know.  
  
Wash was changing his angle with every thrust, desperate to keep the inevitable at bay. “Nngh, perfect,” he grunted into his partner’s shoulder. “You’re  _perfect_ , Epsilon…”  
  
Almost as if on cue, Epsilon came all over his own stomach without even being touched, body locking around Wash to keep him in place as he shuddered and spasmed. It was too much – the sight of him so undone, his constant refrain of “fuck,” the way he was unconsciously clenching around his cock – and everything Wash had been trying to hold back washed over him at once. He lost himself for a few white-hot seconds, biting down on Epsilon’s shoulder when he finally peaked, stilling as he spilled into him.  
  
They stuck together for a few moments, breathing hard, not looking at each other. Then, with the sudden onset of shame that usually came to him in these moments, he uncurled Epsilon’s limbs from his body and disengaged with a groan. Once he collected his thoughts, though, he remembered how it had come to this in the first place. He reached over to grab a few tissues from the nightstand, more about avoiding his partner’s gaze for as long as he could than out of any sense of obligation, and eventually he slapped them down on Epsilon’s still-heaving chest. “Well?”  
  
Epsilon let out a breathless giggle, fuck-dazed eyes glittering. “Shit, I have you fuckin’ wrapped around my little finger, don’t I?” he teased as he mopped up the worst of his mess.  
  
Wash felt his stomach flip again. “What are you talking about?” he asked reflexively.  
  
“Gamma’s right.” A wide smirk was spreading across Epsilon’s face. “Feed you the right lines and you’re fucking putty. Used to envy him for that, but…”  
  
The flare of rage that he’d managed to keep dormant so long now ignited so quickly that Wash could feel it in his chest. Epsilon was very, very lucky that he was still too sex-doped to reach out and strangle him. “Are you telling me that everything you said about that picture was a  _lie_?”  
  
“Doesn’t matter what the truth is,” Epsilon scoffed. “What matters is what you believe.” He rolled onto his stomach, pressing the side of his face into his pillow. “You don’t believe a fucking word of it, do you?”  
  
“Coming from you? Not exactly.” Just because it made sense to Epsilon didn’t mean Wash had to follow his logic. The photograph was proof, yes, but only of the fact that Epsilon had a brother. All the rest was conjecture. “Even if it’s true, there’s no evidence to support it.”  
  
“I thought you’d believe me.” Epsilon sounded genuinely hurt.  
  
Wash had to backtrack. “It’s not that I don’t believe you, it’s…” he started.  
  
Epsilon buried his face in his pillow to muffle his delirious laugh. “You are a fuckin’ easy mark, you know that?”  
  
That did it. He didn’t have to sit here and take this kind of behavior from a kid who was supposed to be his partner. He delivered a hard swat to the back of his thigh, smirking when Epsilon yelped and flinched. “If I were you, I’d choose my words a little more carefully,” he threatened. “I won’t be lied to.”  
  
“Shit, it’s just words!”  
  
“And words  _mean_  things.” He stood from the bed and stretched his arms, feigning nonchalance in a vain attempt to calm his inner fury. “I won’t be cussed at, either. Has anyone ever washed your mouth out with soap?”  
  
“You wouldn’t.” Epsilon didn’t look like he believed what he’d just said, though.  
  
“I would,” Wash told him, heading towards the bathroom in their suite.  
  
“Oh, come on, Wash, I was just kidding…” The panic in his voice rose higher when Wash closed the bathroom door behind him; Wash could hear him screaming, “Don’t do it! Don’t – I didn’t mean it, just don’t…”  
  
The hiss of the showerhead drowned out the rest of Epsilon’s babble. Wash felt filthy, and not just the kind that could be washed away. Couldn’t he be somebody,  _anybody_  else, just for a day, just to feel what it would be like to be normal? Nobody else was having these kinds of problems with their agents – why had he been singled out?  
  
Wash had to put up with what he was given, pretend that he could ignore how wrong this was, but he wasn’t perfect, and he gave in as often as he fought it. Epsilon seemed determined to draw out every single one of his sins, and he just didn’t have the strength to resist. So he had to content himself with nursing his envy. One of these days, it would eat him alive – but until then, he was determined to take out his resentment on the one who was causing it.


	4. Gluttony

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wash bribes Epsilon to learn how to aim: if he shoots a perfect target, he'll show him something nice. But perfection comes at a price...

“Come on,” Wash muttered, hustling Epsilon down the hallway with a bruising grip on his upper arm, “you’re coming to the range whether you like it or not.” He was finally fed up with Epsilon’s terrible aim on their missions; he had to be able to teach him better.  
  
Of course, Epsilon was fighting him every step of the way. “I don’t fucking want to!”  
  
“If you come, I will make it worth your while,” Wash promised him. He wasn’t beyond bribery to get his way.  
  
“Yeah, what are you gonna fuckin’ do?” By the time Epsilon wrenched his arm out of Wash’s hold, Wash had been able to drag him into the range and throw him into a lane. Epsilon put out his hands to keep from falling, gripping onto the shelf separating the lane from the rest of the range, and he glared back at Wash over his shoulder, eyes too blue to be real. “Point of interest: treating me like shit isn’t making me like you any better.”  
  
No echoes of gunfire in here. Good. They were alone. If anyone else was in here during lunch hour, Wash would have chased them out anyhow. He wasn’t in a mood to be messed with, and skipping a meal wasn’t looking to make things any better. “I’m not here to make friends, I’m here to teach you how to shoot.”  
  
“I know how to fire a gun!” Epsilon insisted, spitting out the words.  
  
“Yeah, and you don’t know how to aim it.” Wash reached into the back of his pants, pulling a handgun from a holster at his waistband. Safety on – good – and he took out the magazine before flipping it casually in his hand and holding it out to Epsilon, barrel cool against his palm. “Take it.”  
  
Epsilon stared at it like it was a viper ready to strike. “I don’t want to.”  
  
Wash let out a heavy, impatient sigh. “It’s not even loaded. Just take it.”  
  
“But it’s yours, and…” His hand groped loosely at his side, fumbling for a pistol that wasn’t there. Not like he usually carried it anyhow. “I just don’t fucking want to.”  
  
“What is your  _problem_  with guns?”  
  
“Do you really want to know?” Wash crossed his arms and leaned against the cinderblock walls dividing this lane from the others, a clear sign that he was willing to listen. “When they first de-patterned us – fuck, this is sick – they started combat training. First it was isolation, then the films. Then they gave us a gun and shoved us in a room – and at first it was a mannequin strapped to the chair, one of those crash dummies, joints all wrong and that hollow sound when the bullet goes through their head or their chest or their leg. Then it was life-size dolls, and they looked so  _real_ , and then – then that’s when they brought in the kids.”  
  
“Kids?” Wash was glad he’d skipped lunch; this was enough to turn anyone’s stomach.  
  
Epsilon stared at a point just over Wash’s shoulder. The fingers on his right hand were moving, each fingertip touching the thumb in turn, going faster as he continued to tell his story. “We said we wouldn’t. They looked so familiar… so familiar…” He blinked, seemed to come back to himself. “We did what we were told to do. What we were made to do. And even if we didn’t want to, they’d find a way to force us. For a lot of us, it was medication – they’d keep us from getting it.” He let out a sick chuckle, the sound covering for the sob Wash could still hear underneath. “We lost a lot of people that way. They’d die rather than give in. We’d have to shoot them, too, if the withdrawal didn’t kill them first.”  
  
“That…” There almost weren’t words to describe a horror like that, even though Epsilon’s exposition had been entirely clinical. “That can’t be real.”  
  
“It’s what I remember.” And then came the most disconcerting thing of all: Epsilon just  _shrugged_  like that would take the weight from his shoulders. “Of course, our memories are shit. They liked fucking with our head.”  
  
Wash rolled his eyes and pushed himself away from the wall. Making shit up again – par for the course with Epsilon. “Just take the damn thing,” he snapped, holding his sidearm out again. “It’s not gonna kill you just to hold it.”  
  
“Fine, just – jesus christ!” Epsilon’s wrist went limp, veins in sharp relief, as the weight of the gun dragged his hand down. “The fuck is this?” His glare was sharp, accusatory.  
  
“It’s a M6-GC.” What had he been practicing with, if not with this? “Short recoil, .50-cal, eight-round mag.”  
  
“Fucking heavy,” Epsilon muttered, trying to get a good grip on it with his small hands.  
  
Probably trained on pocket pistols, then. Completely useless. “It’s a Magnum, what the hell did you expect?”  
  
“Something  _less heavy_.”  
  
“Oh, get over it, it’s only six pounds without the magazine in.”  
  
“Yeah, uh, that’s four fucking pounds heavier than my Glock  _when it’s loaded_.” The way Epsilon leveled it to his eye, hands shaking, just went to show how much he couldn’t handle what he’d been handed. “What is this, a goddamn hand-cannon?”  
  
“More or less.” Epsilon was doing this all wrong – Wash could point out at least seven different problems with his form and he hadn’t even started shooting yet. When Wash nudged at an elbow, Epsilon’s form collapsed immediately, and Wash let out an impatient huff at how weak he was acting. “Not like that, come on.”  
  
“How the fuck else am I supposed to hold it?”  
  
“Like this.” He reached out to adjust Epsilon’s hands on the grip; the kid’s small fingers barely wrapped around, and they didn’t quite fit in the grooves designed for Wash’s larger grasp. “It’s not about how tight it is, it’s about how firm it is. Loosen up a little.”  
  
Epsilon’s impatience exploded in his face. “You just told me to –”  
  
“Keep your form,” Wash interrupted him. “I didn’t say to lock it. If you do that, the recoil’s gonna blow your shoulders out.” More superficial adjustments to his elbows, his shoulders, his chin, hands lingering for too long. “Come on. Good posture – spread your legs a little, widen your stance.” Wash nudged at one of Epsilon’s ankle with his toes, encouraging him to get in position. Had he really just had the nerve to tell him to spread? Could he get away with more? “Shoulders in line with your hips in line with your feet,” he insisted, one hand pulling his shoulders back while the other thrust his hips forward.  
  
The moan in Epsilon’s throat was nearly silent, but there was a thrum in the air, and Wash could see his adam’s apple bob in his throat. “This is too fucking complicated.”  
  
“Don’t try so hard. It should feel natural.” Wash obviously needed to demonstrate for him, and so he stepped forward, forming his posture to Epsilon’s: chest pressed to his back, their hips lining up, Wash’s arms covering Epsilon’s, even putting his hands over the kid’s so he could momentarily take some of the weight of the pistol. “Like this.”  
  
Epsilon flinched away from him as much as he could, but he didn’t have anywhere to go. “I can’t –”  
  
“Yes, you can.” He took one hand from the gun to grasp at Epsilon’s thigh, pull their bodies back together. “Mold to me,” he murmured low into his ear, barely brushing his lips against the shell of it.  
  
Even though Epsilon’s body was now anchored, his voice was unsteady. “N-now what?”  
  
“We shoot.” Wash reached into the back pocket of his trousers for the magazine, brought the gun in Epsilon’s hands down, and loaded it. While it was in front of them like that, Wash took the liberty of explaining the anatomy to him. “Safety here. Disengage it – it’s not like your Glock, it doesn’t have a redundant safety on the trigger. Front sight, rear sight,” and at this he brought up the gun to Epsilon’s eye level again. “Patridge-style. Line up the front between the pins in the rear.” He could feel the muscles in Epsilon’s arms twitching as he brought the gun into position, and under his hands, Epsilon’s finger slipped out to grip the trigger. “Not yet!”  
  
“The fuck not?” But he took his finger away nonetheless.  
  
Wash folded it in with the rest, holding it there. “ _Always_  keep your finger off the trigger until you are one hundred percent ready to shoot. Now. If you don’t do this right, you’re going to dislocate your shoulder. You don’t want that. So. Close your eyes. Feel your form right now.” Feel how Wash was pressed up against him, feel how hard Wash was for him.  
  
“What about it?”  
  
“Let the tension out. Hold your frame. Breathe.” As he talked Epsilon through it, he could feel the hunger rising, a deep, endless rumble stuck in his chest. No matter how many times he had him, how many ways, he still felt so empty. He longed to gorge himself on the sight of him undone, taste the inside of his mouth, glut himself on the feel of his naked skin sweat-slick under his hands. “Feel how your finger is pointing right at the target. Feel the gun as an extension of yourself.” Feel Wash as an extension of his own body, feel how Wash was overwhelming him. “Let your finger slip in, but don’t pull the trigger. Tense your finger. Feel how much pressure it’s going to take to pull that.” Epsilon was starting to shake in his hold, but Wash just braced Epsilon’s body with his own. “Shh. Breathe. Just breathe. Trust me, Epsilon. Just trust me.”  
  
Epsilon let out a small cry, his hand clenching around the trigger, and the gun jumped in his hands. Wash could feel the kick through his own body; he stabilized Epsilon’s frame within his arms, deliberately pressing closer to him to take the brunt of the impact. Wash hadn’t told him to fire, and so the discharge had taken him by surprise, but it wasn’t entirely unexpected, given the way he’d been talking to him.  
  
When he looked up to the target, there was a clean hole in the very center – even more impressive, considering that Epsilon’s eyes were still clenched tightly shut and his breathing was erratic. “Good.” Wash’s throat was bone-dry, victim to the scorching thirst burning him alive from the inside, but his voice came out as a husky purr. “Again.”  
  
“You have got to be fucking kidding me.”  
  
“If you give me a perfect target…” He pulled one of his hands away from Epsilon’s grip on the sidearm, ran it along his arm, traced a line over his throat, let it pet along Epsilon’s soft black hair. “I’ll show you something nice.”  
  
“Don’t look, don’t look,” Epsilon muttered to himself, and then the gun went off in his hands again, three times in quick succession, each jolt jarring Wash’s bones. “I can’t do this, I can’t,” he said weakly, bringing the gun down.  
  
“You’re doing wonderfully,” Wash reassured him, voice low, pulling his body in tightly. “Look at your target.”  
  
Epsilon opened his eyes, so blue Wash thought just looking at them could slake his thirst, and glanced down-range at what he’d done. “Shit, that was me?” All four shots were clustered together in the center of the target, eerily accurate.  
  
“That was you.” As much as he wanted full-body contact, Wash stepped back, letting Epsilon have his personal space. “Back in your stance.”  
  
“Kick’s gonna be too much,” Epsilon mumbled, with another unsaid half of that sentence:  _unless you’re holding me._  
  
Wash just raised an eyebrow. “Don’t think you can handle it?”  
  
“I’ll show you fucking handling it.” He brought the gun up again, shoulders tight as he inhaled and then sinking down when he blew his bangs out of his eyes. And then it was like he was fully focused on his target, eyes set in a vacant stare and posture defiant, just before the gun kicked in his hand and nearly sent him flat on his ass with the recoil. Wash was there with a hand on his upper back when he stumbled, and Epsilon just fell onto him and looked up at him with an exhilarated expression on his face. “God _damn_ , this thing’s powerful.”  
  
“Three more.” He pushed Epsilon back up, and the kid naturally planted his left foot a little further back when he adjusted into his form again. “Yes, like that,” he had time to say before the gun went off again. It still forced Epsilon back, but it didn’t jar him out of position. Wash could almost trace the wave of recoil traveling down his arm and through his body to meet the floor. In all the delicious ways he’d seen Epsilon’s body shivering, this by far had to be the most appealing, and he drank in the sight as Epsilon fired again and then once more.  
  
Epsilon only put the gun down when pulling the trigger made the action click instead of discharge; when he looked over his shoulder at Wash, a maniacal grin was spread across his face, and his eyes were bright. “Ho-lee  _shit_ , that was fuckin’ amazing!”  
  
Wash looked over his shoulder to his target; there was a ragged circle torn in the center where the black bullseye had been, with only one bullet hole that had strayed slightly off the mark. That, right there, was superhuman accuracy. They’d trained him, all right, but it had been buried down too deep for him to reach. “Flawless. And here I thought you hated guns.”  
  
“I don’t.” Epsilon flipped, his back to the range, his elbows lounging against the shelf and his hands gripping the edge of it. “I just…”  
  
Wash took his chance and pounced, closing the gap between their bodies and pressing Epsilon back against the ledge. Wash pressed his thigh up between his legs, just on the edge of not enough pressure, and he got to taste a delicious whine when his mouth descended upon Epsilon’s and his tongue snaked inside his mouth. The kid was trembling under him, the tongue pressing against his hesitant and nearly reluctant, and so Wash eased off the smallest bit, hands pinning Epsilon down with nowhere to run. “Are you afraid of me?”  
  
Of course he was – his body was going nuts in Wash’s hold – but Wash wanted to hear him say it. “Yes?” he finally squeaked out, the word lilting up at the end like a question. From his cringe, Wash could tell that he fully expected to be slapped across the face for that answer.  
  
Wash brought his hand up, but it wasn’t to hit him; instead, he stroked along his cheek with the back of his hand, delighting in the blush that illuminated his soft skin. He appreciated the honesty, especially since it made Epsilon uncomfortable. “Do you trust me?”  
  
“I think so?” Definitely a question this time, and he was shaking harder.  
  
“It’s a simple question,” Wash whispered into his ear, toying with a lock of his hair. “Do you or don’t you?” His mouth lingered at his earlobe, flicking it with his tongue and sucking on it briefly.  
  
“Yes…” It trailed off into a hiss, Epsilon baring his throat in a sign of complete trust and vulnerability, hands in a white-knuckled grip.  
  
“Good.” Wash pulled him up by his shirt collar, wheeled him around, and slammed him up against the wall. “You’d better.” Epsilon barely had enough time to cry out before Wash pushed his tongue into his mouth again, using his body to crush him back into the cinderblocks. When he pulled back, Epsilon’s lips were glossy and swollen, his eyes closed in surrender, shoulders heaving with every panting breath. He had to hear his defeat: “Do you want me?”  
  
Epsilon bucked up to meet him, his body forming to Wash. “Yes,  _please_ , c’mon…”  
  
Wash just pulled off, holding Epsilon’s hips away, thumbs sneaking into the waistband of his trousers. “Ground rules,” he said, trying to keep the desperate hunger out of his voice. “Don’t buck,” undoing the button and fly of Epsilon’s pants, “don’t curse,” stripping him to his thighs and leaving his cock and ass exposed, “don’t lock your knees,” wrapping a finger and thumb around each of Epsilon’s wrists and prying his arms away from where they’d been locked around his shoulders, “palms flat against the wall,” pressing them there while he slid down Epsilon’s body to kneel in front of him, “don’t expect this to happen ever again.”  
  
When Epsilon looked down, there was a glint in his eye like the look of a trapped animal; his body was trembling with tension, and his hands were already clawing at the wall. “Wh – what are you doing?”  
  
“Showing you something nice,” Wash murmured, the fog of his breath wrapping around the head of Epsilon’s cock.  
  
His reaction was delectable: the wail in his throat, the frantic twitch of his fingers, the sweet contortion of his face. “Wash…” The last bit was whistled through his teeth when Wash finally touched tongue to skin, curling it around the shaft and licking up as slowly as he pleased.  
  
He knew he shouldn’t be degrading himself with this. It was so beneath him to have to stoop to this kid’s level – lower than – and do this for him, but a promise was a promise, and Epsilon was impossible for him to resist. His skin was salty, a hint of tang making his mouth buzz with taste, but he had to pull away when Epsilon arched towards his mouth. “Don’t buck,” he insisted, shoving his hips back against the wall and digging his nails into the sensitive area where hip met thigh.  
  
“Aagh, fffff –” The sound was drawn out into a long hiss when Wash’s mouth sank down over him, taking him in to the hilt, nose smashed against wiry, curly hair. It wasn’t until he hollowed his cheeks, though, that Epsilon transgressed again. “Fuck –”  
  
Wash scraped his teeth against his shaft when he sucked his way off, making Epsilon scream. “Don’t curse.”  
  
“Ow, shhhhh – I’m sorry, I’m sorry, come on,” he babbled, voice flavored with bittersweet agony. His moan cracked in the middle when Wash pressed a series of open-mouthed kisses up a vein and then against his frenum; once Wash took him into his mouth again, he lost the sound completely to a sigh.  
  
Wash pressed his palms flat to Epsilon’s thighs as he continued to work at him, tracing the taut lines of muscle up and then down and then back up again, but even that couldn’t seem to keep Epsilon pinned in place – he was slowly sliding down the wall, his legs giving out under Wash’s deliberate barrage of sensation. Wash let him fall. Might as well. He’d told Epsilon not to lock his knees, and  _that_  command, at least, he’d been willing enough to follow. It was when one of Epsilon’s hands came up to pet at his ear, shaky and hesitant, that he drew his mouth off with a wet pop and snarled in his face. “I gave you  _very_ simple directions. That’s your third strike. Do you want this or not?”  
  
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, please, Wash,” and by now his eyes were wet with frustrated tears, his face flushed from ear to ear, “I’ll be good, I’ll be good, I promise, please don’t stop…”  
  
“At least you know your manners,” Wash conceded before he put his mouth to better use once more. Epsilon mewled, the sound catching when his head thudded back against the wall, and his entire body seemed to go limp as Wash kept at it. Every time one of his arms seemed in danger of moving, Wash caught it mid-trajectory by the wrist and held it back against the wall; Epsilon didn’t buck when he did that, but his feet were kicking out weakly against Wash’s knees, determined to put up at least a little bit of a struggle.  
  
Wash worked with a vengeance, and so the delicious tension in Epsilon’s body only escalated, winding tighter and tighter until Wash had tuned his moans to fever pitch. “Ohhhhhgod,” he whined, so breathless that Wash could barely hear him over his own pulse thick in his ears. “OhgodWash – I’m gonna come if you keep doing that, nnnngh…”  
  
That was the point, he longed to snark back, but he was determined to push Epsilon over the edge. He couldn’t pull away now – not when Epsilon was so desperate underneath him, not when his breath was catching like that in his throat, not when he’d finally gotten the taste of him to permeate his mouth. Taking one of his hands away, Wash double-checked that Epsilon wasn’t going to move on him, and then he wrapped a thumb and finger around the base of Epsilon’s cock.  
  
A few strokes of his hand, a hard suck, and then he lost it. Wash could feel the heavy pulse against his tongue before Epsilon even had the presence of mind to give him a whimper of warning. And then Wash could  _taste_  it – all the bitterness that Epsilon had, the venom that he nurtured quietly in his heart, was splashing against the back of his throat, across his tongue, in a quick gush of flavor that made him grimace as he pulled away. Some of it he’d swallowed without thinking, but the raw acridity dripping down his throat was making him regret it.  
  
Epsilon was completely undone beneath him: his mouth open, adam’s apple bobbing and chest heaving with each panting breath, hair sticking to his forehead, hands limp and open on the floor, legs tangled in his trousers and frozen with one knee up as if he was still trying to kick Wash away. His eyes were always so stunning like this, half-lidded and glazed over with sex-haze, and they flicked to Wash’s face lazily. Wash held his gaze, not looking away even as he spat what was left into his mouth into the corner of the room; the wet smack when it hit the floor was shockingly loud in the thick silence of their booth, and Epsilon cringed, probably as much at the sound as what Wash had done. “Don’t expect me to do that for you again,” Wash threatened him, wiping his mouth on the back of his hand.  
  
Epsilon just nodded shakily, hands fumbling for his pants and pulling them back up. “Sorry.”  
  
“You need to eat healthier.” Wash pulled away from him while he put himself back together, standing and then leaning against the other wall of their lane. He just crossed his arms and smirked as he watched Epsilon struggle. “You can make it up to me, though.”  
  
“How…?” And then it was like he was truly seeing Wash for the first time, eyes darting to the bulge still obvious in his trousers. “No. No, I – I don’t want to.”  
  
“It’s not about what you want,” Wash said, low and soft and no less menacing for the two. “It’s about what’s fair.”  
  
“It’s not – I don’t want to – I won’t…” He didn’t seem to notice that he was kicking against nothing on the floor, trying to crawl away from him. There was nowhere for him to go, and so he just stared up at Wash with those terrified blue eyes.  
  
Wash sighed with impatience. “The fact that you’re trying to get away is more annoying than anything else. You can handle so much more than just this.”  
  
“Can’t you just fucking take no for an answer?”  
  
It was the expletive that finally made Wash snap. He lunged forward, got a fist in Epsilon’s forelock, and pulled him over to his side of the lane by his hair. It left the boy on his knees in front of him, eyes glassy with tears from the pain and humiliation; Wash had never craved him so much, and his appetite surged even higher at the sight. “Don’t. Curse.” He punctuated his order with a hard smack across the face.  
  
For once, Epsilon didn’t give him any lip. He didn’t turn his head back to face him, he didn’t flinch, and he seemed afraid to even breathe, holding it back in trembling shudders. The only thing he looked brave enough to do was blink, and the tear that had been clinging to his eyelashes made its way down his face, dripping off his chin to land between Wash’s feet. His only response to what Wash had done was to nod dumbly against the hand still in his hair.  
  
“That’s better,” Wash muttered, letting him go. Epsilon crumpled in on himself, leaning heavily on one of his hands, but his eyes followed when Wash flicked open the buckle of his belt. “Careful with your teeth,” he admonished him as he pulled himself out. “I want to see what you can do.”  
  
Epsilon just stared at his cock for a few seconds, a vacant stare in his eyes. “O – okay,” he whispered, as if to reassure himself that he could do this. His first tentative lick at the head had Wash leaning back against the wall, but the long, wet slurp he left from base to tip had him pushing his hips forward for more and petting Epsilon’s head for encouragement. “Is this…”  
  
“Yes, like that,” he hissed, pulling Epsilon’s hair so his mouth could go back to where it belonged. It was almost endearing, the way he braced himself with his hands on Wash’s thighs, and Wash could feel his fingertips dig in with apprehension when he finally worked up the courage to take the head of his cock into his mouth. “Epsilon – nnh!” Warm and wet, with Epsilon’s tongue pressing up just under the flare of the corona, gentle licks from the inside of his mouth. His lips cushioned Wash from the cruel edge of his teeth, but he compensated with the bite of his nails through the fabric of his trousers, his fists bunching the fabric and making his pants slip further down.  
  
Epsilon let him fall away, but it was only to press his mouth against the side of his cock in a long smear. “How long have you wanted this?” Wash could feel his words as a gentle hum, his breath hot but leaving behind the cold of slickened skin.  
  
Since the first day he’d met him, he wanted to say. Since the first time he’d heard a curse tumble from his smutty mouth he’d longed to teach him better, to force his cock past his lips and make him gag on his own words stuck in his throat. Since he’d first seen those blue, blue eyes he’d hungered to see them looking up at him like this, innocent and scared while he was down on his knees. He didn’t say it – couldn’t say it – but he lashed out all the same. “Don’t,” he snarled, pulling on Epsilon’s fringe so he could look him in the eye, “talk with your mouth full.” This time the smack Wash delivered to his face was a vicious backhand. The stinging red of the slap marks he’d left spread across Epsilon’s cheeks like a virginal blush, and his sudden sullen attitude only added to his act of modesty.  
  
All of it was undone when Epsilon’s mouth sank down over him again, his pretense of innocence dissolving bit by bit as he took Wash deeper, ever deeper. The head of his cock ran along the ridge on the top of Epsilon’s mouth, stopping to press into the softer flesh behind his palate, before it slipped into his throat. Epsilon’s lips were taut around the base of his cock, and the snuffling breaths coming from his flaring nostrils heated the hair they were nestled in.  
  
And then he  _hummed_. Soft, deliberate, only one note stuck in his adam’s apple, but it reverberated in Wash’s cock, a salacious thrill tingling along his nerves and buzzing in his brain. “Such a natural,” he murmured, letting his fingers slip through Epsilon’s shaggy black hair. He was good – too good. He had to have done this before – but when, and with whom?  
  
It fell out of his head when Epsilon sucked his way off and then plunged back down again, head bobbing against Wash’s hand in his hair. Wash bowed forwards, body tensed in an arc as he tipped into the moisture and heat in Epsilon’s mouth; Epsilon didn’t miss a beat, just curled his arms under and behind Wash’s legs, gripping his hips so hard his nails threatened to draw blood. When Wash pushed into his throat again, Epsilon took him with only the slightest “nnk!” The feel of his gag reflex swallowing around the head was incomparable, and so was the moan that Wash was forcing him to keep down.  
  
Wash pulled back, keeping a firm grasp on the hair coming from his cowlick, and thrust back in just when Epsilon sighed in relief. He was sniffling now, the sound only getting worse every time Wash hit up against his soft palate, but he still dutifully sucked every time Wash drew away, flushed cheeks hollowing obscenely. “ _God_  I love you,” Wash sighed absently, his other hand coming up to hold the side of Epsilon’s face, thumb smoothing over his cheekbone.  
  
“Mmn,” was Epsilon’s only response, the sound rumbling through Wash’s cock. He only continued moaning as Wash’s thrusts sped up, letting his jaw fall slack but still keeping his lips tight as he let Wash fuck his face. He looked so ravishing, down there on his knees – just begging for it. Each jerky snap of Wash’s hips was a reiteration of how things ought to be. Epsilon was beneath him. Epsilon needed to be put in his place. Wash was the one who held the authority here. Wash held sway over his every breath, had dominion over whether Epsilon lived or died.  
  
But as much control as he had over his partner, his self-control was effectively nil and only getting worse with every moment his cock spent in Epsilon’s sweet mouth. A few more haphazard thrusts and it was gone altogether. His warning to Epsilon was a guttural “ _swallow_ ,” and then he pulled back until Epsilon’s lips were wrapped just around his corona so he could blow over his tongue. Epsilon grasped at his ass, hard, as Wash pulsed in his mouth, and his throat worked in long, steady gulps as he took what he was given.  
  
Wash collapsed back against the wall when it was over, breathing hard. Epsilon slipped back once Wash’s hands fell out of his hair, coughing and gasping as soon as he had a good chance to get air. When Wash looked down, he was stunned at the sight. Epsilon’s lips were cherry-red, glossed with spittle and cum, and Wash actually caught him in the act of licking away the evidence, face flushed with self-consciousness and the residual sting of Wash’s impacts. Epsilon sniffed once, then wiped his forehead, mouth, nose against the sleeve covering his inner elbow.  
  
“You – that was – dear God, you’re good.” It was senseless babble, but Epsilon had blown the lid off his skull when he’d blown him. He hiked his trousers back up around his waist, numb fingers fumbling with zip and button and belt buckle.  
  
Epsilon just looked up at him. “I love you, too,” he said quietly.  
  
That simple statement just scrambled Wash’s mind even more. Did the kid even know what he was saying? Or was he back to being a sarcastic brat? “Where the hell did that come from?”  
  
“You said – I thought you said –” Epsilon shook his head, bangs sweeping back and forth across his forehead. “Never mind. I didn’t hear you right.”  
  
Except, Wash realized with an unsettling drop of his empty stomach, that Epsilon  _had_. He pushed it aside, ignored it, told himself he’d deal with it later. “Come on,” he muttered, reaching down to gently tweak Epsilon’s ear and encourage him to stand. “Obstacle course training starts at 1330.”  
  
“Can’t we eat first?” Epsilon complained as he pushed himself away from the floor. He grasped at the shelf to pull himself up, and he grabbed for Wash’s gun as soon as he could. “No offense, but that wasn’t exactly a meal.”  
  
Wash had to agree – even though he’d just fulfilled one of his most coveted fantasies, he was still starved, insatiable. “We’ll pass through mess on our way out,” he acquiesced. “I need my gun back.”  
  
“No.”  
  
“Epsilon,” he said, tone full of warning. After smacking across the face, after fucking his mouth so vigorously, he could still sass him back?  
  
“I want to keep it.” A small, genuine, and rather unnerving smile was spreading across his face, the grin of a child with his favorite toy but twisted into something malicious. “It’s nice. I like it.”  
  
Wash rolled his eyes at him. “Look, I’ll let you use it in the field, but I need that back.” He held out his hand for emphasis.  
  
Epsilon didn’t seem to know what to do. He looked at the gun, then Wash’s palm, then the gun again. Finally, he gave it up, and Wash snapped it into his holster before Epsilon could get any more funny ideas. “Wasn’t even loaded,” Epsilon mumbled as he watched it disappear.  
  
God, this kid was weird. “Let’s get going,” he insisted.  
  
When Epsilon pushed past him to leave, his shoulder bumped against Wash’s, pushing him back into the wall. “Can’t even get a fuckin’…” Wash could hear him mutter to himself.  
  
Wash grabbed him by the arm before he was entirely out of reach and squeezed, hard. “Don’t curse.”  
  
“That still holds?” Epsilon looked horrified.  
  
“Yes. You do it again, you get what I just gave you.” Epsilon shivered in his hold. Good threat, then – he looked sick. Or maybe that was because the only lunch he’d had was a mouthful of his cum. “Come on. Mess isn’t going to be open much longer.” How could he still be so hungry when he should feel so sated? How could this kid take him apart and deconstruct him to his basest urges, his deepest sins? How could he live like this, with this weight on his shoulders only growing heavier every day?  
  
He couldn’t. But he had to. The constant guilt, the endless craving, the cycle of it that couldn’t be interrupted and only peaked higher, bottomed out lower – it was going to drive him crazy by the end, he was sure of it.


	5. Greed

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Creepy oh-my-God mode: activated.

He’d thought it would get better with time – all of it.  
  
Epsilon’s aim, for one. He’d taught him better, right? So why had they gotten pinned against a cliff before Wash could find a penetration point in the Red forces? He’d seen what the kid could do – so why couldn’t he execute when it mattered?  
  
Epsilon’s attitude, for another. When Wash had pointed out his failure to him during the long ride back to Freelancer Command, he’d expected Epsilon to lash out, to curse at him and make excuses and hide behind his words and generally annoy Wash to no end. Instead, what he got was a sullen teenager who refused to acknowledge that he existed. He didn’t speak, didn’t defend himself, just crossed his arms and scowled at the skyline. This wasn’t an improvement in Wash’s opinion – now he only longed to smack him around a little harder, make sure that there was still some fight left in him, a response, a reaction, a reflex.  
  
But the worst by far was his self-control. Even here, in the locker room, with so many people around to see and the necessity of keeping this a secret, he still couldn’t shake the compulsion that he had to take Epsilon any way he could. As bad as it was when they were together, though, it only worsened with any time they spent apart. Wash would find his thoughts returning to the kid again and again, each daydream turning progressively more vicious and pornographic until it truly wasn’t under his control when he jumped Epsilon the second he came in the door. The only hint that this was the same snot-nosed brat he’d first met was the slightest hint that Epsilon did it on purpose, left him alone for just long enough for his imagination to go rampant and only returning once Wash was past the point of no return.  
  
It wasn’t love. It wasn’t even obsession. It was dependency. Addiction.  _Greed_. He couldn’t have enough – it wasn’t  _ever_  enough. Each time he swore it would be the last, and with each encounter, the interval between them only got smaller. He was miserable when he didn’t have him, even more miserable when he did, and what had started out as a cycle had become a downward spiral. The vortex threatened to destroy him with every move – at this point, even his identity was being ripped away, as with each successive moment Epsilon soaked deeper into his pores and lit up his neurons and penetrated his brain until he could swear that the two of them were the same mind in two different bodies.  
  
Epsilon’s blue eyes flicked to him before he slammed his locker shut. He’d been caught staring. His embarrassment from that had ebbed away long before; now he was used to looking at himself in the mirror and seeing a feral wolf reflected back. Epsilon was wearing the same expression now, only brought out into sharper relief by the gore that had splattered onto his face during their firefight. “Close,” he muttered. It wasn’t a full sentence, but it was the first time he’d spoken in days.  
  
“Too close,” Wash heard himself say. He wasn’t focused on the words; his attention was directed towards the tremor in Epsilon’s hands, the lines of his fingers, the articulation in his wrists. He reached out to still the tremble, but it only made Epsilon shake harder. Yes, he was touching him in a public place, but it was closing time and the locker room was emptying fast. He didn’t have to worry so much about hiding – besides, this was chaste enough. “Why are you shaking?” he murmured, pulling Epsilon closer.  
  
The kid tugged back on the arm that Wash had a hold on, gaze fixed on the floor. “Not here.” His voice was a quiet monotone. “Not now.”  
  
It was the exact wrong thing for him to say. Wash needed him here, needed him now. Logic was gone, shame sloughed away, and he knew that if he had to, he could convince Epsilon otherwise. He put his other hand next to Epsilon’s head on the wall of lockers; the metal was biting cold under his palm, or was his skin burning to the touch? “Why is this a bad place?” He could watch Epsilon’s hair flutter with his breath as he whispered into his ear, and the shell of his ear tasted as enticing as ever when he let the point of his tongue out to sample it. “Why is now a bad time?”  
  
“Don’t,” Epsilon insisted. He turned his face away, cringing as best he could.  
  
Wash only pressed closer, pressed him harder for answers. “Tell me why.”  
  
“Someone might see us.” It was probably the first answer he’d glommed onto, but the way his eyes were darting around the room, Wash almost thought Epsilon was purposefully looking for a third party so they’d get caught and this wouldn’t happen again. There were still footsteps audible in here, but by the sound of it, North and Theta had just left, giving them that much more privacy.  
  
So if that was his best reply, he was dead wrong. “I know.” Wash licked Epsilon’s neck with a long stroke of his tongue, left a lazy open-mouthed kiss at that spot just below his ear, and just as he’d predicted, Epsilon turned to jelly in his hold. “That’s what makes it so…” He had to keep him upright, he rationalized – that was why his thigh was so predictably snaking between Epsilon’s legs and pressing up against his groin. “Enticing,” he finished, voice barely audible.  
  
“Someone’s there.” He sounded so sure of it. Wash didn’t listen – probably just Epsilon making up shit again so he could get out of this, could worm his way out of the debt he owed him for being such an awful shot and making him fear for his life. When he continued to nuzzle against his neck, though, Epsilon only got more insistent. “Wash, someone’s there – someone’s watching us – don’t…”  
  
“Where?” He brought his attention back for only enough time to follow Epsilon’s line of sight. If he focused, he could hear someone breathing, but it might have just been Epsilon’s harsh sighs. “There’s no one there.”  
  
“There was,” Epsilon insisted. There was the stubborn kid Wash knew. “I swear – I swear to God –”  
  
“No.” Neither of them were surprised when his hand clamped around Epsilon’s throat. “Swear to  _me_.”  
  
“I – I swear, Wash, there was somebody –”  
  
“There’s no one there,” Wash repeated, a guttural growl in his ear. Great. Now he could add hallucinations and general psychosis to his running list of Epsilon’s various symptoms. There was only so much he could put up with. “Now. Is this a bad place?”  
  
Epsilon squeezed his eyes shut, hardly daring to breathe even when Wash took his palm away from his larynx. “No.”  
  
“Is this a bad time?” Of course it wasn’t; he let a fanged grin split his face as he ground his thigh against the bulge in Epsilon’s trousers.  
  
It was exhilarating for him to feel Epsilon’s token resistance crumbling away under his repeated questioning. His “no” was almost lost in a sharp gasp, and Wash practically stole the word from his lips in a mauling kiss. Epsilon’s lip split under the cut of his teeth; Wash could taste the sharp copper of fresh blood, but he didn’t stop, only tongued the cut until Epsilon was practically crying from the pain.  
  
When he pulled back, Epsilon was truly a sight. There was even more red marring his perfect pale face, and his fear-wide eyes, a deeper blue than Wash had ever known, were shadowed in his shaggy, fine black hair. He only blushed when Wash continued to stare him down, averting his eyes and pressing back into the row of lockers like he could disappear that way. “You nearly got me killed out there,” Wash said softly, bringing up the back of his hand to stroke along Epsilon’s cheek. “You owe me. I need to feel alive.”  
  
“No –” But Wash cut him off so fast with another attack against his mouth that he swallowed his words. When Wash moved away to bite and suck at his neck, though, the words just started again. “No,” he insisted as he squirmed under Wash’s touch, “no” as he pressed his palms flat against Wash’s chest and tried to push him away, “no” over and over again, more and more frantic, as he used his whole body to shove him away – and a louder “no!” when his arousal ground up against Wash’s in his fight to escape.  
  
It wasn’t until Epsilon started kicking that Wash actually backed off, clutching his ribs after Epsilon dug in his foot a bit too hard. “The hell got into you?” he growled.  
  
“Why can’t you just fucking take ‘no’ for an answer?” Epsilon’s voice sounded raw, between anger and despair; the look on his face was vicious, accusatory, his eyebrows drawn close together, his upper lip raised in a snarl. He only broke eye contact with Wash to spit a mouthful of blood on the floor. His grumble to himself sounded suspiciously like ‘sick fuck.’  
  
Oh, God, not this discussion again. It was all Wash could do to keep his tone even. “I don’t think you understand how this works.” He reached forward for Epsilon’s neck, used the moment of surprise to yank Epsilon away from the wall, and slammed his spine down forcefully into a bench. Epsilon was left breathless, but even as he struggled to sit up, Wash pressed his chest back down, pinning him against the wood. His heartbeat was like a hummingbird under his palm. “You do not question me, you do not talk back to me, and you absolutely do not curse at me or call me by my given name. Whatever you do is what I tell you to do, when I tell you to do it. And when I tell you ‘yes’, you don’t get to tell me ‘no’.  _Got it?_ ”  
  
Epsilon’s skull made little knocking noises against the wood of the locker-room bench as he nodded. “Yes,” he whispered.  
  
“Good. Now that we have that cleared up…” In his impatience, he actually ripped the bottom hem of Epsilon’s turtleneck as he pulled it over his head. “You have two options,” he said darkly, kneeling down to Epsilon’s level and fisting his hands at the waistband of Epsilon’s trousers. “Either you play along,” and he unclothed him completely, exposing his pre-smeared cock, “or this is going to hurt.”  
  
He didn’t get a response. So he took the first choice. Wash couldn’t decide if that made things more or less fun – more fun because he could see the new low he’d brought Epsilon to, less fun because he couldn’t rightfully punish him when he was obeying like this. Epsilon’s head was tilted back, his eyes closed, and his hands were gripping onto the sides of the bench so hard that his knuckles were white. The only movement in his body was the rushed rise and fall of his chest as he tried to catch a breath, and it only got worse when Wash gently wrapped his hand around his cock and gave a slow, smooth pull. “Please,” Epsilon moaned, voice strained, tone ambiguous between ‘don’t’ and ‘do’.  
  
“Please  _what_?” Wash mocked him. He dragged his nails along Epsilon’s thigh and was rewarded with a stifled scream; a bite mark to his hip and the sound finally left his mouth. His skin was filthy, covered in battle grime, and it had never tasted quite so good as it did right now.  
  
“Oh, God, Wash…” Where most normal people would have shied away from the contact, Epsilon only moved himself closer to it. Wash watched, amazed, as Epsilon pushed himself forward on the bench to rest his ass against the narrow edge, propping himself up with the hands still clutching at the sides. When his legs fell open, he squeezed his eyes shut. “Just…  _please_ …”  
  
“Give me your hand.” When Epsilon didn’t move, Wash smacked him across the face. “Give me your hand,” he repeated, yanking one of Epsilon’s arms out from underneath him. Epsilon didn’t seem to understand what was happening when Wash’s lips brushed against his fingertips, but he sighed eagerly enough when Wash took two fingers in his mouth and sucked.  
  
He could feel it on his tongue when Epsilon’s hands started shaking again; it only made him want to lick between his fingers, make him completely helpless. The trembling didn’t stop, though; when Wash looked to Epsilon, his eyes were half-lidded, but his gaze averted, his head turned to the side. “Just fuck me already and get it over with,” he muttered.  
  
Wash just chuckled darkly, giving Epsilon’s fingers a final suck before dropping his hand from his mouth. “You don’t want this to hurt, do you?” Epsilon shook his head from side to side ever so slightly. “Then work yourself open.”  
  
 _“What?”_  
  
Wash swatted his thigh so hard he left a reddening mark behind. “Don’t make me repeat myself.” Epsilon’s reaction was priceless. He looked to his fingers, then to Wash’s face, his expression helpless and horrified. “It’s either that, or I take you dry,” Wash clarified.  
  
He watched Epsilon’s adam’s apple bob in his throat with a heavy swallow; his flush spread down his face and across his chest by now. His fingers were trembling when he brought a fingertip to his hole, but he was still dexterous enough to press in. As he took more and more of his own finger, his cries became more and more desperate, until he was begging “Wash, please…” at the top of his lungs.  
  
“More,” he demanded, his voice husky – always more, he always needed more. Epsilon slipped in a second finger alongside the first, and Wash was enraptured by the moan that Epsilon tried to choke down. “Yeah, that’s it,” Wash encouraged him breathily as Epsilon twisted his wrist and plunged his fingers in and out. Almost without having to think about it, he undid his button and fly, brought himself out, started stroking in time with the jerky, clumsy movements of Epsilon’s hand. “Juuuuust like that…”  
  
Those fingers started scissoring him open, and Wash was engrossed in their movements. If he paid attention to what he was seeing and feeling, then he could pay no heed to Epsilon’s soft sobs, ignore the smell and taste of fear on him. “Please, God,” Wash could hear him pray  _sotto voce_ , “deliver us, deliver us, deliver us,” repeated each time softer and scratchier like a worn-out groove in a record.  
  
Epsilon’s entire body was trembling now; Wash took it as a sign of anticipation. The tension was ratcheting up for him, too. It would be better for him to put both of them out of their shared misery. He caught Epsilon’s hand by the wrist, took his fingers away, and without uttering a word of warning, slammed in to the hilt with a barely-contained growl. Epsilon screamed, loud and piercing, the sound echoing from the concrete blocks of the locker rooms, and Wash could see his hands gripping the bench as if to hold onto something real.  
  
It wasn’t enough just to be inside him. He had to move, to take, to violate. With each vicious thrust, Epsilon got that much more pliant beneath him, to the point where Wash could lift up his legs and rest Epsilon’s heels on his shoulders. Epsilon’s head was lolled to the side, his eyes open; he barely blinked, barely breathed.  
  
This – this wasn’t right. That look in his eyes… Wash had seen it before. The night he’d come back to find their room trashed, Epsilon had been wearing that same dead expression when he’d said it wasn’t him who’d done it. Looking at him now, it was easy to give in to the deception that this wasn’t really Epsilon, that Epsilon wasn’t here right now. If Wash pounded into him harder, he’d come back to himself. If he fucked him until it hurt, Epsilon would get out of his headspace.  
  
But it didn’t seem to matter how strong he came on or how forceful he was or how brutal he could be. Epsilon still lay there, not responding. And it  _still_  wasn’t enough for Wash. If he could mainline the kid, he would. This was the closest he could come, moving inside him and praying with every smack of skin against skin that this insane friction would burn the sin out of him, would get rid of that terrifying, overwhelming need to get his fix. This was as close together as they could be, the stupid barrier of their bodies keeping them apart. Wash wanted to crawl inside him, rip him apart and put him back together right, or maybe not at all, just unravel him and hold the threads in his fingers and make his little puppet dance.  
  
He had to settle for ramming into him as hard as he could. Epsilon only closed his eyes and sighed when Wash’s hand wrapped around his cock; the blink forced a tear over the bridge of his nose. Wash worked at him harder, ever harder, forcing him to fold nearly in half so he could lean down and run his teeth along the taut skin of his neck. Little purple marks were already blossoming there when he pulled back, and it only drove him closer to the edge.  
  
It wasn’t enough for Wash to lose his load inside Epsilon – he had to mark him, stain his skin, degrade him as far as he could. Epsilon didn’t react when he pulled out, didn’t respond when Wash took both of their cocks in hand, didn’t even flinch when Wash came onto his stomach. The only sign that he was close was a loud, gut-wrenching sob that made his abs tighten, and then he cringed as he blew over Wash’s fist.  
  
The next few moments felt like a hangover on fast-forward. For a minute Wash was still drunk: tingly through his fingers, hazy in his brain, didn’t quite realize where he was. Then there was the moment of clarity that hit him with the force of a migraine, the tacky feeling of his dry tongue sticking to the roof of his mouth. He felt nauseated as he looked at the proof of what he’d done – not an empty liquor bottle but a sixteen-year-old boy, one that still wouldn’t look him in the eye. Of all the promises he’d ever made, the pacts he made with himself were always the worst, because they hurt the most when they were broken. And Epsilon – Epsilon was just as much an organic part of him now, and hadn’t he promised the kid, once, that he’d never give him more than he could handle?  
  
Epsilon was still shivering, making the beads of cum on his skin wobble. Wash tried to be comforting by reaching out and caressing Epsilon’s arm, but it still didn’t get the kid to look at him. He opened his mouth, but his throat was too dry and his tongue didn’t seem to work. There was nothing to say to those blind blue eyes. He’d done a terrible thing, one he couldn’t ever come close to atoning for. Of all his sins, this one had to be the worst.  
  
There had to be some kind of penance he could do. As soon as the idea filtered into his mind, he shucked his clothes until he was just as naked as Epsilon, and before the kid could protest, he picked him up with an arm around his shoulders and another arm under his knees. “Come on,” he muttered into his hair, lips smeared against his forehead.  
  
Epsilon shrunk in on himself as Wash carried him, curling up in his arms and resting a weak hand on his chest. His breathing felt like he was trying to keep himself from crying. When Wash looked down, though, his expression was totally stoic, his blind eyes a dull, desaturated blue under a gloss of tears. And no matter how close Wash held him, he wouldn’t stop trembling. “Don’t,” he tried to squeak out through chattering teeth. “Don’t.”  
  
“Shh,” Wash soothed him. He’d never seen anyone quite this discomposed before, and certainly not because of him. “Can you stand?” Of course he could; the question was whether he’d follow orders. But he seemed just as unquestioningly docile as before when Wash let him down and put his feet on the cold tile floor of the locker room showers. His posture, instead of holding his usual arrogance, was defeated. When his eyes finally flicked to Wash, it was like Epsilon had stabbed him in the gut. He looked pitiful like this, with all his hopelessness reflected in his gaze. He looked empty. Numb. Broken.  
  
Wash was of the school of ‘you break it, you buy it.’ He’d been the one to force Epsilon to this, and so he had to accept the consequences. When he turned the shower on, he could feel the icy cold of the water even though he wasn’t under the jet. The spray was so pressurized that it left Epsilon’s skin raw-red wherever it made contact, and Epsilon’s teeth only chattered harder from the chill.  
  
The filth from their mission was already beginning to wash away, though, and the blood that had spattered his skin was rinsed off in pink rivulets. While Wash busied himself with a washcloth and soap, the shower started scalding Epsilon, by the look of the steam rising around them, but Epsilon didn’t move from under the showerhead. Wash knew the feeling – that whatever dirt was on him wasn’t just physical, that he had to flagellate himself to even come close to true redemption.  
  
But when Wash went to turn the tap, Epsilon reached out for his wrist to stop him. “Don’t.”  
  
“I won’t let you hurt yourself.” He’d already hurt him enough already – was the kid this greedy for pain, or could he just not feel right now? “Here.” He dialed down the heat, and just when Epsilon was about to whimper in protest, he pulled him out of the spray just enough to start his soapy washcloth between his shoulderblades. “Shh,” he whispered between lathering caresses, “it’s okay, it’s going to be all right.”  
  
“Don’t,” Epsilon insisted. He tried to push Wash’s hand away from him, but if he wouldn’t clean himself, who would? Wash could at least make him presentable, after what he put him through. With each swipe of his hand, he revealed more and more fresh, clean skin, but even worse, he brought Epsilon’s new bruises and scrapes into better focus.  
  
Wash scrubbed like he could erase the marks from his skin. Eventually Epsilon stopped protesting; Wash concluded that he’d finally overcome his reflex. When Wash held him from behind and reached around to wipe the mess from his stomach, Epsilon leaned his head back to rest it on Wash’s shoulder. It was such a small gesture, but it made Wash have to swallow around an unexpected lump in his throat. “I’m sorry.” It slipped out against his better judgment, but at least it was true.  
  
“Why?” Epsilon asked quietly, barely audible over the hiss of water hitting tile.  
  
There was such a weight behind his single word that Wash had no issue with discerning what he meant. Why did he keep doing this? Why did he apologize if he would only repeat the pattern? “I can’t help it,” he sighed into Epsilon’s ear. “If you wouldn’t talk back, or curse, or nearly get me killed, none of this would happen.”  
  
“I try,” Epsilon insisted, his voice cracking. “I try so hard to be good.”  
  
“Then you’ll just have to try harder, mm?” But even as he nuzzled his nose against Epsilon’s cheek, he knew that even if Epsilon became a perfect angel overnight, it wouldn’t make any difference. He’d just be determined to break him down again, to get him to lapse so he’d have the small comfort of an excuse for his actions.  
  
Even Epsilon seemed to realize that it wouldn’t be enough. “I can’t be perfect,” he grumbled, but even as the words came out of his mouth, he spread his legs slightly, enough for Wash to get the washcloth over the insides of his thighs.  
  
“You’re perfect for me,” Wash murmured into his ear. Perfectly calibrated to hit every single one of his buttons – almost like laser-guided karma. He kissed the bite marks he’d left on Epsilon’s neck, buried his nose in his clavicle and smelled the softness of soap.  
  
Epsilon reached back a hand, hooked it around Wash’s neck; Wash had to hold him steady with an arm around his waist when his knees threatened to give. “Why?” Epsilon started to ask. The word cracked in the middle, and he had to pause to swallow and wet his lips. “Why do you put up with me?”  
  
He was looking for a reaffirmation of their bond. He was trying to manipulate Wash into saying it again. He wouldn’t – not when that word couldn’t encompass the dark turn their relationship had taken, and definitely not when Epsilon was fishing for it so clumsily. “I’m addicted to you,” he settled on.  
  
Epsilon’s sigh came out as a choked cry. Once he started sobbing, he didn’t seem to be able to stop. The words he blubbered out were either in discombobulated English or a language Wash didn’t understand. Wash only used this fit as an excuse to hold Epsilon closer, to press his body up against Epsilon’s and try to ride out his high that much longer. At least Epsilon seemed to take some solace out of the contact, forming himself to Wash as if he wanted his body to melt away.  
  
Wash didn’t want to get out of that shower. Facing the locker room would mean facing what he’d done. Facing the dormitories would mean reliving all his mistakes. Facing Epsilon would mean that the cycle would start all over again, and each step of their dance would only get more devastating. Wash regretted it every time he succumbed to temptation like this – and yet it didn’t seem to stop him from doing it over and over again. Wasn’t that the definition of insanity? Trying the same thing over and over and expecting a different result with each attempt?  
  
Well, then, he was definitely crazy. So much for sanity.


	6. Sloth

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They're tired, so tired, and so it seems inevitable that one of them is going to snap.

It was supposed to be a lazy Saturday.  
  
As usual, Wash was working. He never got a day off. Even though he and Epsilon had never been assigned a mission over a weekend, there were always chores that needed done. There were reports to write, maps to sync, data to enter, weapons to clean, schedules to organize, assignments to download – and all of that was secondary to his work as an Agent. He had to keep himself in top form physically and mentally, which meant strength and speed training every day, obstacle courses when he had the time, firearm drills, and hand-to-hand combat training.  
  
It would have been easy for Wash to give in to exhaustion. His backlog never seemed to shrink, and procedures only seemed to get tighter as Project Freelancer progressed. Even worse, Epsilon refused to help him with any of his work. Whenever he wasn’t on an assignment, either from Wash or from the Project, Epsilon was practically catatonic, curled up in his bed with his face to the wall, hardly even breathing. The only difference between his waking and his sleeping was that he’d scream in his sleep.  
  
They weren’t nice, clear, one-note Wilhelm screams, either. No, these were the body’s primal response to an assault of terror on the mind, the noise so harsh and ragged that it split Epsilon’s tone in two. When he screamed like that, he sounded like a lamb being led to slaughter. Even worse, the sound was usually accompanied by his sheets ripping or his nails scrabbling across the thin, soft skin on the insides of his forearms.  
  
By now, Wash had fallen into the habit of sleeping in Epsilon’s bed with him, keeping the kid curled up against his body with a hand always ready to clamp over his mouth in case he dared to cry out. It was the only way he could get any rest. He’d tried fucking Epsilon to sleep, but Epsilon would always end up flailing awake after just a few hours if Wash wasn’t physically holding him down.  
  
Shutting Epsilon up in the middle of one of his fits was painful, because Epsilon had a tendency to bite down between his thumb and the rest of his hand. He’d drawn blood more than once; Wash had a perforated scar curve on either side of his hand by now, the grooves lining up perfectly with one of Epsilon’s teeth. While he slept, though, Wash could press close to him, could bury his nose in Epsilon’s soft hair, could breathe in the clean scent clinging to his collarbones.  
  
That was Wash’s doing, too. Ever since that shower they’d shared in the locker room, Epsilon hadn’t bathed alone. The first time, he’d let his hair get greasier and greasier for an entire week until Wash was fed up enough to stick him back under a showerhead. Wash had been forced to wash him, because Epsilon’s hands shook so badly that he dropped the soap. There was now a permanent set of child-size handprints framing a thin torso imprint that showed whenever the glass shower wall got fogged over.  
  
It went even beyond that, though. Epsilon wouldn’t even eat now unless he was force-fed; Wash was lucky if he could get the kid to choke down two protein meal packs a day. More often than not, Epsilon refused the food he was offered. Day by day Wash watched him disappear, and night by night he found it easier to trace the spaces between Epsilon’s ribs, the jut of his hipbones, the widening gaps between his collarbones and his shoulders.  
  
The sleeping ,the showers, the starvation – it was laziness, that’s all there was to it. Babysitting Epsilon was turning into a full-time job on top of the work Wash already had to do. What had started out as a task list meant for two had turned into Wash taking over all their duties, plus loading himself with additional responsibilities. It was no wonder he felt thin, worn, frayed around the edges. He was working himself to death.  
  
One task at a time, though. What was he doing? Oh, right – cleaning their equipment. He’d already deconstructed his DMR and oiled the action top to bottom, checking every point to make sure nothing would jam it, loading ten or so magazines one by one and bruising his fingertip where it caught between spring-loaded action and bullet. Epsilon wasn’t quite back from shooting practice – Wash was surprised he’d gone at all – and so he’d have to wait on cleaning the Glock, but there were other firearms in here. His battle rifle was a little tougher to crack, but everything broke apart eventually, and soon the pieces were strewn across the desk, itemized as Wash inspected the action.  
  
The room smelled of gun oil by the time Epsilon stumbled back in. He looked haunted, frame too gaunt, eyes looking like they’d seen too much. When he paused in the doorway, he let his forehead rest on the forearm that was propping him up, the hand holding his Glock falling limply at his side. The way he was catching his breath made it sound like he was trying not to cry, but maybe Wash was reading too much into it – Epsilon hadn’t had the energy to cry for more than a week now.  
  
For once, Epsilon didn’t make a beeline for his bed the minute he fumbled to bring the door shut behind him. He laid his Glock down in front of Wash and  _then_  plopped himself down on a bed. This time it wasn’t his own, but Wash’s, and he slumped over onto the desk where it abutted his footboard. The way he looked up at Wash was mildly disgusting in how obviously it was begging for attention. Wash ignored it, taking apart the pistol in front of him and leaving the rifle for later. He was always amazed at how grimy Epsilon’s equipment could get: already his hands were blackening from grease and soot.  
  
In front of him, Epsilon’s hand reached for the Magnum, and Wash let him have it. It surprised him that Epsilon would actually put forth any effort to help him with his cleaning. What really startled him, though, was when Epsilon opened his mouth voluntarily. “We have to leave.” His voice was hoarse; between screaming at night and silence during the day, he hadn’t spoken a sentence unprovoked in weeks.  
  
“We have to leave?” Wash couldn’t have heard him right.  
  
Epsilon nodded, though, and sniffed heavily. “I – I want to go home.” His eyes were fixed on the Magnum as he turned it over and over in his hands, inspecting it for flaws.  
  
Wash sighed. Was Epsilon purposefully trying to distract him? “There is no  _home_ , Epsilon,” he explained, trying to keep his aggravation out of his tone. “All you have is right here. With me.”  
  
“I don’t want to be here any more.” Epsilon’s voice began to shake. “I don’t feel safe.”  
  
Okay, now he had Wash’s attention. He put down the part of the Glock he’d been working on, swiveled his desk chair to face Epsilon, and put a finger under his chin to lift his face; when he pulled back his hand, his fingertip left a smudge behind. Those blue, blue eyes stared into him again – or, rather, past him, a thousand yards into the distance. He was angry with Epsilon, yes, but he kept his voice even and low, even managing to put some concern into his tone. “Why don’t you feel safe?”  
  
“They know.” He let his gaze drop again; with his hands, he mechanically ejected the empty magazine of the Glock and slammed a full one in its place.  
  
Wash brushed his hair out of his eyes, trying to keep Epsilon concentrated on him. “Who’s  _they?_  What do they know?” Epsilon looked up, helpless, eyes wide with fear, brows cinched with despair. “Talk to me, Epsilon. I need to know.”  
  
“York and Delta.” The words were muttered between clenched teeth.   
  
Wash gripped Epsilon’s jaw hard enough to bruise. “ _What_  do they know?”  
  
“York saw us. Delta pieced it together.” One of Epsilon’s hands circled weakly around Wash’s wrist.  
  
When Wash pulled back, the kid clung to his hand like a lifeline. He looked to the pistol he had dismantled, in pieces on the desk; he couldn’t face Epsilon’s eyes right now. “They know about us,” he realized, voice hushed. Their dirty little secret was out in the open now.  
  
“Delta knew I remembered everything.” Wash could feel Epsilon’s hands trembling as he tried to hold on. “He just didn’t know why.”  
  
“So they know about us, they know about the trigger – what  _didn’t_  you tell them?” Wash didn’t mean for it to come out so accusatory, but there it was. He yanked his hand away from Epsilon’s grip, preferring to actually get some work done as long as they were going to have this argument.  
  
Epsilon started babbling the second his brief comfort was taken away. “Delta, he thinks, he thought he was my brother, I had to tell him, I had to correct him, they were  _wrong_ , Wash, both of them were wrong...”  
  
The Alpha. The useless fuck-up had told them about the Alpha. “You told them  _everything!_ ” It was worse than Wash had imagined. He’d known Epsilon was stressed, but to blab like that, uncontrollably – it was inexcusable. Wash should never have let the kid out of his sight.  
  
Epsilon was just as accusatory in return. “I thought it would help!” he snapped, even as he backed into the corner of the bed. “If someone else could share the load, I wouldn’t have to take all of it, because it isn’t mine, these aren’t mine, they’re everyone’s, I remember for  _everyone_  and I shouldn’t have to –”  
  
Unbe-fucking-lievable. “So you hung me out to dry because you couldn’t handle it on your own?”  
  
“Who was I supposed to talk to?  _You?_ ” Epsilon spit it out like a curse word. “You’re the reason why it happened in the first place!”  
  
“Don’t blame me for this,” Wash warned him. “This was your idea.”  
  
“ _Was_ ,” Epsilon repeated, emphasizing the past tense. “Now it’s all about  _you_. What  _you_  want. What  _you_  need.”  
  
“Because that’s how it works,” Wash reminded him. “You’re my subordinate. I’m responsible for you. It will always be about me before it’s about you.”  
  
“So it’s never going to be about me.” Epsilon said it quietly, decisively, like he was asking for confirmation of a foregone conclusion.  
  
Wash wanted to tear his own hair out. He never should have let Epsilon interact with that logical prick. He felt pinned – like anything he said would end up trapping him in a logical fallacy. “I didn’t say that,” he insisted.  
  
“So we can leave?”  
  
“No!” But as soon as the word left his mouth, Wash watched as the last of Epsilon’s hope died in his eyes. “Not now,” he amended. “We don’t have the right supplies –”  
  
Too late, Wash heard the click as Epsilon disengaged the safety on the Magnum. Before he could stop him, Epsilon had the gun pointed at his chest. “We’re leaving.”  
  
“Are you  _threatening_  me?” Wash had to laugh. This was rich. “I can disarm you faster than you can blink. I’ll break your fingers while I’m at it, too. If anyone asks, you got them caught in an elevator door.”  
  
Epsilon cocked his head to the side, then brought the gun down. Wash hadn’t realized the tension he’d been holding in his body until he wasn’t at gunpoint. “Fine. I won’t threaten you.” Instead, Epsilon brought the pistol up to his own face, pressing the end of the barrel into his temple.  
  
“Epsilon, what are you doing?” Wash asked, trying not to roll his eyes. “You can’t just –”  
  
“So you  _do_  care,” Epsilon murmured. He was looking straight at Wash now with the stare of the possessed, and the grin spreading across his face was barbed with fangs.  
  
Epsilon’s histrionics failed to amuse him. “Put the gun down.”  
  
“Not until you say we’re leaving.” Epsilon dug the barrel into his face just that little bit more.  
  
“Okay. Fine.” Anything to get Epsilon to snap out of it. “So let’s say we’re leaving. Where are we getting supplies?”  
  
“We’ll steal them.”  
  
He made it sound so easy. Like there weren’t tracking devices in every single piece of clothing and weaponry that they had on loan from Project Freelancer. Like he knew where the warehouse was that held all the unused equipment. Like he could weasel in and out without a hitch. Like they could take the tracking chip out of their Warthog without alerting staff. “We can’t.”  
  
“We’ll make do.”  
  
“With four firearms, ten magazines for each, the clothes on our back, and a vehicle? Are you  _crazy?_ ” He shouldn’t have asked that question, even rhetorically – there was a glint in Epsilon’s eye that was unnerving him.  
  
Epsilon slowly lowered the Magnum, flicking the safety back on with his thumb. “I trust you.”  
  
Well, at least that answered his question. If Epsilon still trusted him, after everything he’d done to the kid, then he definitely had a screw or several loose. Wash couldn’t help the derisive snort of laughter that escaped his mouth; he couldn’t believe he was still entertaining Epsilon’s fantasies. “Where are we going, then?” He turned back to Epsilon’s pistol on his desk; the gun wasn’t going to clean itself.  
  
“To my brother.”  
  
“Oh, yeah, right, mmhmm.” Wash held a piece of the trigger action up to the light, leaning back in his chair and bracing himself with a foot on his desk. “Your brother. When did you last see him, again?”  
  
“I was six.” Epsilon’s tone sounded wounded.  
  
Wash couldn’t be bothered to turn around; he didn’t really care if Epsilon was crying again. He did it so often now that this time couldn’t be considered that unusual. “Lenny could be anywhere by now,” he pointed out lazily before blowing a bit of grime out of a crevice in the metal.  
  
“He’s out there,” Epsilon insisted, his voice cracking.  
  
“You don’t even know if he’s alive,” Wash said, getting at the action now using a chamois.  
  
“He’s out there!” Epsilon repeated it louder, as if saying it again would make it true.  
  
“In fact,” Wash continued, swapping out the piece he’d been cleaning with one that still needed gone over, “you don’t even know for sure that he’s real.”  
  
“Don’t say that!” His scream made it sound like he was in physical pain from this argument.  
  
“I’ll say whatever I damn well please.” This piece of the Glock, the barrel, was filthy. Even threading the chamois through it and pulling it out the other end was hardly making a dent. “Why, is it bothering you?”  
  
“If he wasn’t real…” Wash heard Epsilon swallow heavily, then sniff. “If the Alpha isn’t real, then my entire life is a lie. Hundreds of kids got kidnapped and tortured for absolutely no reason. My dad strapped me to a table, fried my brain, and took away my meds, just because he could. None of my memories are real. You giving them back to me was worthless. And trying to get rid of them meant  _nothing_.”  
  
Wash just shrugged. “Sorry, kid.”  
  
Silence for a moment. The only real sounds in the room were Epsilon’s snuffling breaths and the scritch of cleaning cloth against metal. Then there was a distinctive click that couldn’t have come from Wash’s hands, and Epsilon started quietly praying. “Our Father the Church on Earth, hallowed be thy name. Thy vision come –”  
  
“Epsilon, put the safety back on,” Wash drawled. It wasn’t worth raising his voice at Epsilon over theatrics like this.  
  
“– thy will be done, in war as in your dominion.” Epsilon took a deep breath in the middle of his garbled litany; when he continued, his voice sounded a little stronger, more determined. Was this his battle mantra? Had Wash inadvertently flipped another switch that ought to have remained untouched? When Wash swiveled in his desk chair to face Epsilon, the kid’s eyes were uncharacteristically closed; he was smoothing his fingers over the Magnum in his lap over and over again, caressing it in far too intimate a manner. “Give us this day our daily dread, and forgive us our trespasses –”  
  
“Epsilon, look at me when I’m talking to you.” Epsilon’s single-minded focus after weeks of being too scatterbrained to keep a train of thought together was distressing.  
  
Epsilon opened his eyes, but he still wasn’t looking at Wash. Whatever he could see wasn’t visible to the eyes, and Wash was thankful that Epsilon’s sardonic smile wasn’t directed at him. “As we forgive those who have trespassed against us,” he intoned, and finally his eyes came into focus, targeting Wash with a fury cold as Hell.  
  
It wasn’t just the stare that made the blood freeze in his veins: Epsilon had brought the gun up to his face again. “Stop being so melodramatic,” he said, exasperated with Epsilon’s sudden attitude problem.  
  
Epsilon’s smirk just widened. “And lead us not into temptation –”  
  
“Epsilon,  _put down the gun._ ” Why wasn’t the kid obeying a direct order? Was Wash going to have to break his fingers after all?  
  
The kid obviously didn’t care about the consequences. “But deliver us from evil,” he finished. He pushed the barrel of the gun between his teeth once the last word was out of his mouth, pointing the muzzle directly upwards.  
  
Wash crossed his arms over his chest, leaning against the desk chair as far back as it would go. “We both know you’re not actually going to do it,” he bluffed, his voice coming off a lot more confident than he felt.  
  
The gun went off.  
  
“Eddie!”  
  
The force of the blast shoved Epsilon’s head back, leaving a wide, wet splotch when his skull cracked against the corner of the room and painting a swathe of blood on the wall when he slumped onto his side. Slowly, his fingers uncurled from around the pistol grip, and moment by moment, his eyes grew dimmer. Wash launched himself out of the chair and onto his bed, trying frantically to catch Epsilon before he fell. He managed to cradle Epsilon’s head against his shoulder, and his shirt was immediately soaked with blood, so much blood, too much blood, flowing thick and dark from the hole through the top of Epsilon’s head.  
  
Epsilon was still holding the gun, his index finger curled possessively in the trigger guard. His gun. Wash’s gun. He’d used Wash’s Magnum, the gun that Wash himself had taught him to shoot properly. The irony of it hit him like a punch to the gut. His own pistol painted with Epsilon’s blood. His sidearm that he’d just cleaned this afternoon, now sullied with a stain that would never wash out.  
  
Wash tried to take it away from him, tugging at it with his palm over the front sights, but it only kicked again in his hold. When he looked down, there was a hole clean through his hand, hollowed out between his carpals. The stigmata only spread wider as he stared. He couldn’t quite access the pain – it was buried too deep, layered under the tightness in his chest, the choking feeling in his throat, the burning pricks behind his eyes.  
  
An animalistic sound filled the tiny room; once Wash realized he was the one that was howling, he fell silent. Still there, barely audible, was a wet respiration, faint and slow but present all the same.  _Epsilon was still breathing._  “Oh, fuck,” Wash whispered. “Oh, fuck, fuck – medic!” he screamed, slapping the intercom by his bed. “We need a medic here! Eddie, don’t you die on me, don’t you fucking… don’t…”  
  
Wash could have stopped this. He could have pleaded with his ward to put the gun down instead of just ordering him, he could have reached out and broken his fingers and taken his pistol back, he could have gone along with what the brat wanted, he could have taken care of him or treated him better in the first place. He’d done none of those things, and now there wasn’t anything he could do. No matter how close he held Epsilon, no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t take away this pain, couldn’t make the hole in his skull vanish, couldn’t liberate his body and give Epsilon’s mind a place to reside next to his own. Couldn’t undo what Epsilon had done. Couldn’t ever forget the smell of his blood and the sound of his breath and the feel of his skeleton as he bled out in Wash’s hold.  
  
 _“You self-sacrificing idiot.”_  
  
He was smearing blood across Epsilon’s face again, but this time in a doomed attempt to clean him rather than out of a perverse desire to make him filthy. He’d thought Epsilon would be more beautiful broken than whole, but he always assumed he’d be the one doing the breaking. Epsilon hadn’t done this so he would die, he did it just to spite Wash, keep him from getting what he wanted. As always. The constant resentment he held for this kid only flared up again in his chest, even as his gut twisted against itself with pity.  
  
 _“When have I ever given you more than you can handle?”_  
  
The memory of the statement was so powerful Wash could nearly hear the words reverberating through the room. He’d broken his promise. Every day, every moment, every encounter he’d ever had with Epsilon had been overwhelming, too much energy compacted into too small a space. And this was the aftermath: an explosion literally blowing Epsilon’s brains out. He almost envied Epsilon for having the pressure taken off his shoulders; instead, the burden was now solely on him, and he didn’t know if he could bear it alone.  
  
“I know what you want.”  
  
So why couldn’t Wash have just given it to him? All Epsilon had wanted was to feel safe, belong to someone, do his job, and forget his past. And all Wash had done was violate him, take their relationship far past the point of possession, drive him to distraction, and force him to remember. And all the while both of them had been blind to what they’d really  _needed_ , thirsting for it but not knowing where to look.  
  
 _“God, I love you.”_  
  
It had slipped out in a moment of weakness, but that didn’t make it any less true. Of course, that wasn’t the only truth. There was also disdain and dependency and distress, all of them fighting to make themselves known at once. Even this rush of feeling hadn’t stopped Wash from demanding more at every opportunity, until the disdain turned to fury, the dependency to addiction, the distress to despair.  
  
 _“I won’t let you hurt yourself.”_  
  
Whenever Epsilon did that, he wasn’t just harming himself, he was also lashing out at Wash. Every accusatory glare from those too-blue eyes was just another reminder of how much he’d fucked up, and trying to keep himself under control only made it worse when he finally, eventually, inevitably snapped again. It had turned into a constant feedback loop of pain, only getting worse with each cycle, deepening as they sank further into their downward spiral.  
  
And it had come to this.  
  
Wash was only vaguely aware of someone breaking down their door; he was too concerned with listening for Epsilon’s labored breathing. He was still holding onto life somehow, even as a bubble of blood swelled and burst at the corner of his mouth. Soon, though, other hands were intruding, drawing Epsilon out of his arms. They handled him carefully, as if there was still something left in him to break. It didn’t matter how gently the medics were moving him, though: they were touching Epsilon, taking him out of his hold, leaving him with nothing but blood on his hands. “Get your hands off him!” Wash yelled, pushing roughly at a medic’s shoulder and hunching closer to Epsilon’s body. “Don’t fucking touch him!”  
  
“Agent Washington, we need to take Agent Epsilon for medical treatment.” The medic couldn’t quite meet his eye, though, and her hands were shaking badly as she tried to pull Epsilon away.  
  
“You will take him,” Wash gritted out, his good hand already curling into a fist, “over my dead body.”  
  
“We would prefer your cooperation in this matter, Agent Washington.” Oh, fuck, not him. Anyone but him – but when Wash looked up, he saw the Counselor standing over him, that ever-present look of condescension on his face only swaying slightly under the pressure. A brief moment of eye contact, and then the Counselor looked to the two Corps members flanking him. “Restrain him.”  
  
“No,” Wash whispered, and then “no” again, louder, when the Corps members left the Counselor’s side and the medics ripped Epsilon out of his grasp. “No,” he insisted as he reached for Epsilon, and then a shouted “no” once the two officers took an arm each to keep him from going anywhere. And then, finally, a howled “no!” that left his throat raw and his lungs burning as Epsilon left his sight, the vowel only drawing out while he struggled against his captors.  
  
The Counselor was reading off information from a slate he was holding; Wash could hardly hear him underneath his litany. “Agent Washington, you are under arrest for conduct unbecoming an officer and a gentleman –”  
  
Wash didn’t wait for him to finish the list of his charges. In a page straight from Epsilon’s playbook, he snarled and spit in the Counselor’s face. His arms were immobile now, but he was determined to fight this, and so he lashed out and landed a few brutal kicks on the Corps members holding him back.  
  
If the Counselor was irritated by Wash’s attitude, he never showed it; he casually wiped the spittle from his face, his eyes still on his slate. “Dope him.”  
  
The needle went into his neck, cold and unforgiving, and Wash screamed as the ice flooded his veins and turned his world black.


	7. Regressions

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Backstory.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i didn't write this

**Lust.**  
  
"His eyes."  
  
"That's the first thing you remember?" The voice is strangely soothing, drawing answers from him.  
  
"Yes."  
  
"What about his eyes?"  
  
He shudders, not wanting to recall them, but unable to block it out. "They're blue. So blue, like it isn't real. He's always watching me."  
  
"What else do you remember?"  
  
"Water. There's water."  
  
"A body of water?" the voice prompts. "A lake or river?"  
  
"No. Falling, warm. A shower."  
  
"And he is there?"  
  
"He..." He doesn't want to say it, the words stick in his throat.  
  
"Is he there?"  
  
"He's watching me."  
  
"He's watching you in the shower?"  
  
A half sob and he nods. "Yes."  
  
"What happens then?"  
  
"When I'm done, he takes a towel and dries me off."  
  
The voice stays quiet this time, letting him work through the difficult memory. He opens his mouth and tries to say it, but he can't seem to get the words out. The voice understands, gives him time.  
  
"He touches me." He says it at last and he wants to throw up.  
  
"Touches you where?"  
  
"F... first... on my arm. He rubs my arm, then my back. Then tells me he needs to make sure I'm clean, and he... he..." He gags on the memory, his hands moving to cover himself as he trembles. "He touches me... my... my penis. He touches it and it feels strange."  
  
"Then what?”  
  
“There’s a knock at the door and he stops. Someone comes in and he says I’m done with my shower. He wraps the towel around me and I run out of the room.”  
  
“And that’s when this moment ends?”  
  
“Yes.”  
  
Silence but for the pencil moving in the notebook. “How old are you?”  
  
“Four.”  
  
“How old is he?”  
  
“Fourteen.”  
  
  
  
 **Greed.**  
  
"What do you remember next from him?"  
  
“We’re camping.”  
  
“How old are you now?”  
  
“I’m six, now. I think.” The answers are more automatic this time. They've already begun the regression process, it's easier to recall things now. The pencil scratches again.  
  
“What happens when you’re camping?”  
  
“We’re in a tent together.”  
  
“Is it just the two of you?”  
  
“Yes.” Breath. “No. There’s another tent.”  
  
“But just the two of you in your tent?”  
  
“Yes.”  
  
“What happens?”  
  
“He takes my blankets. He says he’s cold and needs them.” He shivers, the cold creeping up his skin again.  
  
“What do you do?”  
  
“I say I’m cold, too. He doesn’t give them back. He says if I want to be warm I have to sleep under the blankets with him.”  
  
“What do you do then?”  
  
“I don't want to, so I take my pillow and curl up and try to sleep, but it’s so cold. I can’t stop shaking. He’s watching me with those blue eyes again, making strange noises.” He tries to curl in on himself, not wanting to remember this now. It was easier before they got to this part.  
  
He's prompted for more, though. “Then what?”  
  
“I'm too cold. I tell him I’m cold. He lifts the blankets for me to get under and he’s not wearing underwear. He’s touching himself and making noises.”  
  
“What happens?”  
  
“I am too cold, so I get under the blanket and he puts his hand down my underwear. I tell him no, but he says he’s going to keep me warm. He keeps touching himself and touching me. He pulls down my underwear and lays down on top of me and rubs against me. I say no and try to push him off but he says it’s to stay warm. Then he covers my mouth so I can’t cry.” Like he’s crying now, reliving it.  
  
The voice waits for him to be ready again.  
  
“His noises get louder until he leaves his white stuff on my stomach. He touches me again. He keeps his hand on my mouth and I cry a little as I feel something come loose inside me.”   
  
"Come loose?"  
  
"It feels like it. I don't know what it is. It feels good but I don't want it to."  
  
“Then what?”  
  
“He falls asleep, but he’s still holding me down, I can’t get away. Finally I sleep, too.”  
  
“Is that the end of this moment?”  
  
“No.” He cries again. “He does it again.”  
  
“When?”  
  
“The next night. He touches me again, and he makes me touch him.”  
  
“How long does this go on?”  
  
“Every night. Five nights. I don’t want him to touch me, but it’s too cold.”  
  
“Is it the same every night?”  
  
“Yes. Always he's on top of me, rubbing. I tell him no but he doesn’t listen. I don’t get to tell him no, I have to do what he says, he’s older.”  
  
“Do you tell anyone?”  
  
“No. He says he’ll say I’m the one who broke the raft, and I’ll get whipped. He’s always telling lies.”  
  
  
  
 **Envy.**  
  
“He does it, and they don’t care.”  
  
“What does he do?”  
  
“Swears.”  
  
“Swears?”  
  
“Curses. Fuck, shit, ass, bitch, cunt, cock,” he blurts, like he’s got Tourette's suddenly.  
  
“He says these things?”  
  
“All the time.”  
  
“Why does that bother you?”  
  
“Because when I say it, I...” He lets his sentence hang unfinished. He doesn’t want to finish it.  
  
“You wish you could say them, too?”  
  
“... no, I don’t like the words.”  
  
“Why did you say them?”  
  
“I... don’t want to say them. I don’t like them. I don’t know why I said it. I was angry at him and I said them to him. Now he’s mocking me and calling me a little faggot piss-mouth ass-whore.”   
  
“What do you do?”  
  
“I’m afraid of him, but I’m still angry, so I stick my tongue out instead.”  
  
“What does he do?”  
  
“He hits me. Hard, on the face. He slaps me.” He doesn’t cry this time. He’s learned not to cry.  
  
“What then?”  
  
“He takes me into the bathroom and makes me take my clothes off. He calls me a piss-mouth again and asks if I know what happens to piss-mouths. Then he takes his penis out and urinates in my mouth.”  
  
“You have your mouth open?”  
  
“He’s holding it open.” The acrid stench hits his nose and makes him gag. “It’s running down my body to the drain.”   
  
“What do you do?”  
  
“I wish I was stronger than he is. I wish I could hit him, back. I wish I could spit it in his face. I wish I could curse at him. I don’t and hope he stops.”  
  
“Does he?”  
  
“When he runs out of piss. He tells me that’s what happens to piss-mouths.”  
  
“What happens then?”  
  
“I start wetting the bed.”  
  
  
  
 **Gluttony.**  
  
“I’m hungry.”  
  
"How old are you?"  
  
"Eight."  
  
"Can you fix yourself something?"  
  
“He won't let me. He says he’ll give me something to eat if I’m good.”  
  
“Good at what?”  
  
“I don’t know. He just says if I’m good. I try to be good, but I don’t know what he wants me to do.”  
  
“What do you do?”  
  
“I try to be so good. I don’t say or do anything to make him angry. But I’m hungry. I say it again.”  
  
“What happens?”  
  
“He tells me he has something for me. I come over to get it and he takes his penis out and tells me I can have that. I say no, but he grabs me by the front of my hair and pulls me down. He makes me go on my knees between his legs and tells me if I do this good he’ll make me some food.”  
  
“Go on.”  
  
“I don’t want it in my mouth. He won’t let me go, though. He says not to use my teeth, then pushes his penis against my mouth. When I don’t open, he hits me.”  
  
“Then what?”  
  
“He hits me again. I can feel the blood on my face so I open my mouth. He forces himself in and I gag, but he holds my head so I can’t pull away. He pushes himself in very deep. I don’t cry, but my eyes are wet anyway.”  
  
“What happens?”  
  
“He isn’t hitting me or yelling now so I try to be good so he’ll stop and give me something to eat. I suck...” He loses his voice for a moment, shame and fear welling inside him.  
  
“You try to satisfy him.” It is not a question.  
  
“He... he looks down at me and smiles. Those eyes... he pets my face and tells me how good I am now. I don’t want him to hit me so I try to do what he wants.”  
  
“Then what?”  
  
“He closes his eyes and pushes himself into my mouth and I can taste it as it goes down my throat. I’m choking. He grabs my chin and orders me to swallow it.”  
  
“What happened after that?"  
  
“He makes me a sandwich and leaves.”  
  
“What do you do?”  
  
“I eat it as fast as I can so he won’t change his mind and take it away from me. Then I go back to my room and... I...” He can’t say it. He can’t admit to it, it’s too horrible. He doesn’t want it to be real.  
  
“What do you do in your room?”  
  
“I wanted him to stop, but now I... I’m touching myself. I touch myself and wonder what it feels like to have a mouth there.” He’s rubbing the erection that’s grown in echo of his memory, tears glistening on his cheeks.   
  
  
  
  
 **Wrath.**  
  
The sound coming from his throat is eerie, and he doesn't know why he's making it.  
  
"What's happening?" the voice asks.  
  
"I'm choking."  
  
"Why?"  
  
"... he's choking me."  
  
"Why?"  
  
"I... don't remember."  
  
"Why is he choking you?" the voice insists, calm but not to be denied an answer.  
  
"I was bad," he finally admits. He doesn't want to admit it, to accept it was his fault.  
  
"Why were you bad?"  
  
"I made a mess. He's angry."  
  
"What kind of mess?"  
  
He doesn't want to say, but he can't keep it in. "I broke the dish and now he's choking me."  
  
"Then what happens?"  
  
His voice changes as he echoes the words whispered into his ears so long ago. “I don’t think you understand. I’m in control of whether you live or die. You got that?”  
  
“He says this to you?”  
  
“Yes.”  
  
Scritch-scratch goes pencil on paper. “How old are you this time?”  
  
“Eight. Seven. I don't know! I don’t remember. I think he's going to kill me then, but he lets me go."  
  
"He lets you go?"  
  
"Yes. He takes his hand away."  
  
“What does he do then?”  
  
“He says I owe him for breaking the dish.”  
  
“What does he do?”  
  
“He takes me into the bathroom. He says he’s going to wash all my filth off of me. He takes off my clothes and makes me get into the shower.”  
  
“What happens in the shower?”  
  
“He begins to wash my body.”  
  
“He is in the shower with you?”  
  
He pauses. “Yes.”  
  
“He is naked?”  
  
“Yes, he takes his clothes off and gets into the shower with me.”  
  
“What does he do?”  
  
“He’s...” He begins to shake again, his hands again moving to cover himself. “He’s pulling on me. He’s pushing against me, I can feel him. He says he has to wash inside of me, because I’m bad. He puts his finger inside me and says he’s washing me, but it’s making me dirtier. It hurts, and I’m crying, but it’s my fault for being bad. He keeps pulling. Please, please stop, please stop I don’t want to feel this.”   
  
Suddenly he knows. “It’s not his finger,” he cries and sobs. “It’s not his finger inside me. Make it stop, I don’t want this! No, please stop!”  
  
The voice tries to calm him down. “You can leave the memory. You don’t have to be there anymore. You’re safe, now.”  
  
He’s still pleading, still frightened and hurting.  
  
“Agent Washington, you can wake up now. Agent Washington?”  
  
He opens his eyes. His throat feels dry and it’s hard to speak. “What?”   
  
“We are finished, Agent Washington.”  
  
“Oh.” He looks around, like he’s not quite sure that where he is is real. He touches his cheeks and feels the tears, but is afraid to ask. “How long was I out?”  
  
“Not long,” the Counselor assures him. “Do you remember anything?”  
  
He hesitates a breath, then shakes his head. “No. Should I?”  
  
“It can happen, but it is rare.”  
  
“Huh.”  
  
“If you are feeling disoriented-”  
  
“No, I’m fine,” he answers a little too quickly.  
  
“In that case, you are free to leave.”  
  
Wash stands up, refusing to let show how shaky his legs feel. “I guess I’ll see you next time, then.”  
  
“Actually, this was our last session.”  
  
Wash stops. That couldn’t be right. “Just like that?”  
  
“We have all the data we require. You’ll be assigned your partner based on the results of your profile.”  
  
Wash looks at him. He doesn’t like how that sounded; so... impending. He finally just turns and walks out, wondering why he feels the overwhelming urge to vomit, and goes to take a shower.


End file.
